


The Unnamed Doctor

by MuggleBorn92



Series: Travelling with the Doctor [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 18th Century, 19th Century, 22nd Century, 51st Century, 67th century, A.I. - Freeform, Ancient China, Cold War, Colonial Africa, Colonialism, Dalek - Freeform, Delirium Archive, Early Modern Era, East-Germany, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Far Future, German History, German Revolution of 1918–1919, Holy Roman Empire, Ice Warriors - Freeform, Mars, Middle Ages, Nazi Germany, Neanderthals, New Earth, Nuremberg Trials, Parallel Universes, Protestant Reformation, Resus One, Silurians, The Romans, Treaty of Versailles, Tsingtao, UNIT, Villengard, Weeping Angels - Freeform, Weimar Germany, West-Germany, Wirrn, World War I, World War II, age of exploration, antiquity, polynesia - Freeform, pre-history
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:40:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 51,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23753224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuggleBorn92/pseuds/MuggleBorn92
Summary: Julian didn't believe in the stories told among his family about the mysterious Doctor coming to his family every now and then in the past. It's only when things start to get weirder that Julian realizes that there might be even more to the story than he thought and that he might actually experience the very stories he heard…
Series: Travelling with the Doctor [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711081
Kudos: 4





	1. Family and Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> I thought of a Doctor Who fanfic that explored the show's educational aspects again. I love history as I love science-fiction and Doctor Who just offers endless possibilities. 
> 
> I can also Play around a bit and introduce original villains, in this case, the Oryutaaya...

It was the day they would be abducted that he would met the most important person in his life. But that day hadn't come just yet. For right now, Julian, along with three fellow students, was sitting in the foyer of the AAI, the Asia-Africa-Institute of the University of Hamburg, drinking tea. It was hot. The sun was beaming implacably through the glass ceiling of the hall, a great, open room that was two stories high. When gazing into the foyer from the entrance, the first thing one noticed was the two rows of planted trees with thin stems. Julian wasn’t quite sure what kind of trees they were or if they were even real and alive. Right to the left of the entrance a pretty small café could be found where the students and sometimes the lecturers would meet between lectures. The remaining part of the ground floor was occupied by the AAI Library which was encircling the foyer save for the café. Straight opposite to the entrance was a set of double stairs to the first and second floor where lecture theatres and seminar rooms as well as the offices of lecturers and secretaries were located.

“Why does it _have_ to be so difficult?” Lars was nagging.

Julian looked up. He knew Lars didn’t really mean it like that. Besides, he of all people had the least right to complain being the best of the class.

Battsetseg also looked up to Lars but then her eyes wandered to the entrance and she frowned.

“Hey Julian, do you have a secret stalker?”

“I’m sorry?” Julian asked.

“I saw that blond woman yesterday too when we were heading to the language lab.”

Julian turned and looked over his shoulder. There she was: a woman wearing a grey-bluish coat, a black shirt with a rainbow on her chest, blue trousers and brown boots. And was that an earring on her left ear? But it wasn’t the woman’s slightly odd choice of clothing – quite a few students were wearing interesting cloths. No, it was the fact that Julian too had seen her before…and that couldn’t be. Because she looked about 30 years old. And the first time he had seen her, he had been five! So she would have to be about 14 to 16 years old back then. But the way he remembered her – and he remembered her so clearly – she looked exactly as she did now. He had seen her two more times, once when he was 12 and then back when he was 17. He had always dismissed it as a déjà-vu or an imagination. But if others could see her…

With a slight smile, the woman turned and went away.

“I saw her too, a few days ago,” Thuỷ said, “When we were going to the canteen in the Phil-Tower.”

“We’ve got to go, class begins in three minutes!” Lars suddenly said urgently.

He hurried up and went up the staircase. Just when they turned left into the corridor where the seminar room for East Asian studies such as Sinology was located as well as the secretariat and some of the lecturer’s offices, Julian spotted a man coming out of the office of the Professor of Korean Studies, his father’s office. A man stepped out wearing a brown tweed jacket and a bowtie. His dress reminded him of an old British professor but the man seemed too young, in his late twenties in fact, that it too seemed like a weird choice of clothing. He spotted Julian and gave him an enthusiastic wave and a bright smile. Unsure, Julian gave a shy smile and went into the seminar room.

* * *

It was nice not to have Uni on Fridays. It meant a longer weekend and more time to enjoy oneself. Julian was especially looking forward to this since his family would come together for coffee. First to arrive were grandfather Klaus and his wife, gran Renate, along with Klaus’ siblings, great-uncle Rainer and great-aunt Ingrid and Renate’s sister great-aunt Ursula. Aunt Nadia also came. But Julian mostly enjoyed meeting his mother’s brother Andrej with his wife aunt Olga and their two children Pjotr and Ksenija who were both just a few years younger than Julian.

“Yeah, we’re staying in Germany for a little while, you know,” uncle Andrej said as they made their way from the house to the garden, “to get to know this country properly. Last time we didn’t really plan it in. _Oh bože_ , that was so long ago, you kids were just babies back then.”

“I can show Pjotr and Ksenija around Hamburg during the weekend,” Julian suggested.

“Your Russian is really good,” Ksenija observed.

They sat down at the big wooden table in the garden and Julian’s mum served everyone coffee.

“So Georg,” Klaus said after a while of small talk, “how was your trip to North Korea?”

“Quite insightful, as always,” dad answered. “The government has allowed people to trade things at special markets. I wasn’t allowed to make photos of this though. People are interested how things have gone between South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un when they had met.”

“They talk about that over there?” Andrej asked perplexed.

“Oh they do. Of course, they don’t really have all the info that we have over here. And Kim’s accomplishments in this are of course exaggerated. But yes, they talk about this. I mean, it’s big news.”

Georg took a sip from his cup.

“Oh, and I met the Doctor yesterday.”

Julian took a sharp look at his father. The Doctor? But…

“He looks more like you described him now, dad,” Georg continued. “Really young, tweed jacket and bowtie.”

Julian looked at dad, than at mum.

“But that was a story you told me!”

Not only his parents, his great-grandfather Josef too had told him the story of the Doctor and his companion many times. He told him the story until Julian was 5 when he had died. It was the first time that Julian had witnessed someone die. His great-grandmother Hertha died two years after that. Julian remembered the funeral. Most of the attendants he knew but there was one man who he hadn’t known and who never again showed up in his life. An elderly man with grey hair and bushy eyebrows.

“You told me of the Doctor. The skinny man in a long coat with a blue box who comes to save the children from monsters. With his companion… the woman in the red jacket.”

“He is real,” Klaus said. “And he is a lifesaver.”

Everyone now turned to Julian’s grandfather.

“Who is this Doctor?” Pjotr asked.

Klaus smiled to himself. Rainer and Ingrid too seemed to remember.

“The Doctor was always there. He protected our family for over a hundred years. It was him who saved us three (he gestured to his siblings) and our parents. Got us out of Dachau.”

Klaus was silent for a moment. Even though he himself couldn’t remember his very short time at the concentration camp as he had been a baby when it had happened.

Klaus looked at Julian.

“He had two companions with him: a young woman with glasses…and a young man. You remind me of him, you know.”

The way his grandfather looked at him made Julian uneasy somehow. As if he was looking at someone he had met long ago.

“But he only saved you.”

Julian gulped.

“He didn’t save your grandfather.”

Ernst Heller. Julian’s great-great-grandfather who had been a high-ranking member of the SPD, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the oldest German political party.

Georg shook his head.

“No, Ernst and his wife Annette and their older son Martin were captured in Paris in 1940. They were first moved to Drancy internment camp outside of Paris and then transported to Auschwitz… where they died the same year.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Julian wondered why this Doctor would only save parts of his family if he was so protective of them. But then again, one man couldn’t possibly be in all places at once. How was he have gone to go in there in the first place if not as a prisoner?

* * *

The next day Julian took Pjotr and Ksenija out for a tour around Hamburg. They visited the university where Julian studied, the _Europa Passage_ , that long shopping centre.

“I saw images of the G20 summit last year,” Pjotr said. “How did you experience that? Did anything get destroyed?”

“No, because we don’t live downtown,” Julian replied.

“I was present though. Not demonstrating, I mean, not with those ultra-left groups. But there were some other peaceful demonstrations too in the first day. And I stayed at a friend’s overnight and that’s how I witnessed it. Her name is Thuỷ Đàm, a fellow student of mine.”

They went into an Asian restaurant to eat lunch.

“Do you really believe that story about that Doctor?” Ksenija asked.

Julian thought about this for a moment.

“I’m not sure… I mean, they wouldn’t lie to us, especially with such a big situation of being saved from a concentration camp. But the details are a bit questionable. Did you hear uncle Klaus? The Doctor has protected our family for over a hundred years! How old must this Doctor be now? Unless… unless they talked about two people. It kinda sounded like they talked about two people, didn’t it?”

“Maybe that title is inherited somehow,” Pjotr wondered.

Julian thought about this.

“But dad said that he now looked like my grandad described him, like, he again looked this way. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

“Well, it’s not like strange things haven’t occurred,” Ksenija observed.

“That spaceship crashing into Big Ben, the first contact with an alien species and then this Cube Crisis six years ago…”

“Do you believe all that?” Julian asked.

“Don’t you?”

Julian chuckled.

They spend the rest of the time making up theories that could explain the phenomenon of the Doctor.

* * *

Thuỷ was already waiting for him in the canteen when he had finished the lecture in his subsidiary subject, history. Grabbing a tray, Julian and Thuỷ got in line of a short queue which was quickly lengthened behind them.

“So, how was Media Studies?” Julian asked.

“Oh, it was great,” Thuỷ said with a big smile on her face. She set her tray down and observed the few choices of food.

“Thailand!” the guy behind the counter called out.

“Uh, no!” Thuỷ said frowning.

“Huh, could’ve sworn you came from there,” the guy rambled on. “China, isn’t it? Your roots?”

Thuỷ sighed in frustration.

“Come on, let’s go somewhere else!” she said to Julian. Julian let his tray fall on hers and together they left the canteen.

They marched into the warm sun and headed back for the AAI. Luckily, they had a free period and thus time to choose something a little further out of the campus. There were many restaurants around the university which was spread over the whole city. There was a good Chinese restaurant not far from here. Maybe they could persuade Lars to join them.

“There is a poetry slam in the Audi-Max building this weekend,” Thuỷ said.

“I’ve read the advert. And you’re performing.”

She nodded brightly. Then she grabbed his arm.

“Look!”

Julian looked to where she was pointing and saw a curious blue box a few meters ahead of them.

“That’s the box the blond woman was using. You know, the one who seemed to stalk you.”

Julian frowned. Slowly, as in a trance, he walked towards it but before he could read it, one of the doors to the box opened and a man stepped out.

On seeing him, Julian made a double-take. It was the same man whom he had seen Thursday, the man who has exited his father’s office. He was still dressed in that brown tweed jacket and bowtie. His boyish face formed a bright, excited smile.

“Julian!”

Flapping his hands up and down, the man approached Julian gleefully and took his hand shaking it rapidly with both of his own.

“Oh, such a pleasure to finally see you again! Grown up Julian!”

“Uh…”

Julian chuckled at the warm, enthusiastic greeting and finally forced his hand out. The man spoke in English in a posh British accent.

“Oh this is great. And who might you be?” the man asked looking at Thuỷ.

“Thuỷ Đàm,” she said.

“Hello Thuỷ, nice to meet you. Nice glasses! Love those glasses! Had ones myself before…wonder where they are now…”

“Um…thanks,” she stammered using her flawless American accent, “but…who _are_ you?”

“Oh, just a friend passing though,” the man said.

Julian’s face lit up.

“You’re the Doctor! You have to be!”

The man’s smile grew even brighter.

“Yes!! I’m the Doctor. Old friend of your family’s. Very old friend. Now…”

Getting between them, he put his arms around Julian and Thuỷ as if he was hanging out with old friends.

“…Can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture?”

Waving towards the nearby Asia-Africa-Institute, he looked at the two of them questioningly. Thuỷ raised her eyebrows.

“That’s the AAI…”

“Yeah…” the Doctor murmured disappointed that they didn’t see what he wanted to show them.

“Well, seems someone has been very interested in it. Thought I’d caught someone scanning the building. Now why would they be interested in the faculty of a university?”

He put his arms off their shoulders and staggered off to the blue box which Julian now noticed had the words _Police Public Call Box_ written on it.

“That looks…British,” Thuỷ observed as the Doctor got through the door.

“Looks British, isn’t British,” came his voice muffled through the door. “Come on in!”

Frowning at Thuỷ, Julian slowly opened the door. Why would the Doctor expect them to cram themselves into this little Police box? And how did he get it here?

But as he turned back again, his jaw dropped. They weren’t in a blue box anymore. Instead, they were in a large, gigantic room of some sort coloured in gold, bronze and orange. It was weird and bizarre. Very old looking and yet new and futuristic. Just next to the doors there was a hallstand and next to it either a really big round window or some kind of screen. A set of stairs led to a hexagonal console with dozens of nubs and levers, dials and displays. The console was built around a…something that Julian could not identify.

“Welcome to the TARDIS,” the Doctor said joyfully as if he was showing Julian and Thuỷ his new toy.

“Uh huh…” Thuỷ made her eyes darting around the room.

“It’s…some kind of…spaceship?” Julian suggested.

“Time and Relative Dimension in Space, TARDIS. It can go anywhere in time and space,” The Doctor called jumping the last few stairs onto the platform where the console was and typed something into something that looked like an old keyboard. He then looked at a display which hung loosely from the ceiling.

“Aha!” he exclaimed. “Yes, someone locked onto the building. They could only do that with their shields disabled, in about a moment…”

He frantically pushed several knobs and a lever.

“Ha! Got it! It’s in low orbit, directly above the clouds.”

Julian ran over to see what the Doctor was searching for. The display showed something resembling a gigantic ship of some kind and a beam that came out of it.

The Doctor’s face suddenly went serious.

“Oh bugger! They’re not just scanning the institute, of course not! I should have noticed it right away, oh, stupid, stupid Doctor!” he muttered to himself slapping his forehead.

“Why, what is it?” Thuỷ asked. “Who are they?”

The Doctor looked at her as if he were to announce that a tornado would blow over the institute.

“Oryutaaya!”

“What?”

“ORYUTAAYA!”

“What are the Oryutaaya?” Julian said clutching the Doctor’s arm.

“An alien species from the Garn belt. Specialised in slave trade. They kidnap species they deem inferior and either keep them for themselves or trade them. Oh, this is bad! They’ve targeted the whole faculty. Good that you’re here.”

“But the others?” Thuỷ asked incredulously, then shaking her head. “Hang on a minute? Slavery??? Kidnapping? Isn’t there supposed a law prohibiting that?”

The Doctor looked at her.

“Actually there is, well, kind of prohibiting it…and they didn’t get the memo!”

He slammed his hand on the console in frustration as the screen showed them what was happening outside. Julian’s jaw dropped again. People were disappearing! Beamed away by some kind of yellow light. Realisation hit him: his dad! His fellow students!

“Well, can’t we do something?”

“Of course we’re gonna do something! D’you think I let them get away with that? You don’t really know me that well, Julian!”

“Actually, I don’t know you at all,” he reminded the Doctor.

“Uh, right. So!”

His face lit up again and he ran around the console rapidly turning levers and pressing buttons. It almost seemed as if he was dancing around the console. There was a strong tremor inside the TARDIS and the three of them were shaken around. Desperately clinging onto something for support, they watched as the weird thing in the centre moved up and down and the machine made some really strange noise: _Vworp Vworp Vworp…_

The Doctor continued to dance around the console and pulled another lever. The room shook again and with a loud _thud_ , they seemed to come to a stop.

“Right then! Mission University 1! No, that’s stupid! A stupid title, forget that title!” the doctor rambled on as he stormed off towards the doors.

“Are we on their ship?” Thuỷ wondered.

“Exactly!” the Doctor exclaimed brightly as though he had announced that their favourite restaurant was finally open. “On their bridge, to be precise.”

Still smiling at them, he opened the door. After they exchanged looks, Julian and Thuỷ followed. Raising his eyebrows and letting his jaw hang, Julian gazed around the bridge. The dispersion of the light gave the room an eerie atmosphere, like some sort of dark laboratory. Several strange looking apparatuses and panels gave off reports or displayed status reports or similar. It took him a while to realise that he could understand the readings perfectly as if they were all in plain English. How could that be?

“Okay…Hello to you all! Ah, you’d be the Captain, nice ridges.”

The Doctor was babbling and flapping his hands again. Julian turned around to focus on him.

“Who are you?” The alien captain growled in a deep voice that didn’t sound human at all, way too deep.

“I’m the Doctor. I have an offer.”

“We will not trade this stock!” the Oryutaaya snarled.

“Great, I do not expect you to,” the Doctor called, “because they are protected. This world is protected, in fact. So: a warning. I offer you the chance to return the humans, pack your bags and run away. If not, then I have to stop you.”

The captain roared in laughter. Unperturbed and with an unusually serious expression for his young face, the Doctor stepped closer to the captain.

“Trust me. I’ll let you go unharmed. But this is where I draw the line,” he whispered before holding out his arms. “I’ll donate a burger for you!”

“You have no right to deny us these slaves!” the captain growled, “Article 42 of the Shadow Proclamation allows it –”

“Article 42 states that slavery is merely an individual punishment as an alternative to imprisonment. And above that, you’re also violating Article 57: No level 5 planet is to be burned, invaded and nor its inhabitants seeded or enslaved. So…”

The Doctor put his hand in his jacket and pulled out a metal rod of some kind with a green light glowing at the top. Stretching his arm out, he pointed it at one of the panels.

“…like I said: one warning.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed.

“Look at this planet’s data,” the Doctor said calmly. “My final offer.”

One of the captain’s subordinates looked to him in what Julian believed to be a frightening gaze and gestured to him to come over. The captain did so and Julian approached the Doctor.

“Do you honestly think that will work?”, he whispered.

“Oh yeah,” the Doctor whispered back. “Did it before…while trying out a new outfit if I remember correctly.”

The captain returned from the panel.

“We will return the humans.”

“And you’ll give me your word that you’ll never come back here.” The Doctor hissed. The captain nodded. The Doctor proceeded to observe the operation himself. He then went back towards his box and Julian and Thuỷ followed him open-mouthed.

“Who the hell are you, Doctor?” Thuỷ asked immediately once they were back inside.

“The Doctor,” he answered simply.

“But…that’s not a name…Is it a name?” she asked confused, “I mean…Doctor…Doctor who?”

The Doctor just smirked at her.

“If you like,” he merely replied.

“Now, time to go.”

He pulled a lever and the TARDIS shook again before thudding to a halt.

With a relieved and yet still impressed expression, the two humans walked out of the TARDIS. They were now right in front of the main doors. From here you could clearly see everyone being back again. Slowly stepping through the front doors of the AAI, both Julian and Thuỷ still had to wrap their heads around what they had just experienced. And as they turned around, they faintly heard the undistinguishable _Vworp Vworp Vworp_ as the TARDIS virtually disappeared into thin air!

“So, he did it again.”

Julian turned to see his father standing there. Cleaning his glasses, he looked at his son with a smile on his face.

“And you’ve been there with him at his side.”

He looked at both of them.

* * *

Thuỷ stayed at Julian’s that evening as Julian told her everything that his family members had ever told him about the Doctor.

“And you’re going to travel with him, that’s what your grandfather said.”

Julian nodded.

“He also told me of a young girl…with glasses.”

Thuỷ raised her eyebrows and looked at him lowering her chin. Then her look darted to the window and she got up. As Julian followed, he could hear it, loud and clear. Then the blue box fully materialised.

“So what do you say?” he said to her. They looked at one another. She grinned.

* * *

The Doctor awaited them in the garden. Leaning against the TARDIS with his arms crossed and a cheeky smile, he waved to them.

“Georg told me that I might play a certain role for you,” he said as they approached him.

“You don’t know?” Julian asked.

“Of course I don’t know, what would be the fun of that?”

He snapped his finger and the TARDIS door opened on its own letting its orange light shine on the dark grass. The sun had already set.

“Okay!” the Doctor explained once they were inside. “Anywhere in time and space…where do you want to go?”

Rubbing his hands, he excitingly waited for their answers. They spoke in unison:

“Past!”

“Future!”

Julian and Thuỷ looked at each other.

“How about both?” Julian suggested. “First to the past, then to the future? In turns.”

The Doctor smiled brightly.

“How far?”

“To where it began…the earth…life,” Julian said. “German history.”

“Next hundred years…the next millennia…I wanna know how we evolve,” Thuỷ said excitingly, “whether we survive the earth…or whether the earth survives us.”

“Ah!” The Doctor nodded. “There and back again.”

Running to the console, he began running around it preparing their destination and stopped with his hand on the lever.

“Hello Big Bang!” he declared.

The TARDIS went off shaking and mourning its signature sound. Laughing deliughtly, Julian put one arm around Thuỷ’s shoulder and watched as the TARDIS worked its way to the beginning of the universe…

* * *

Georg watched the blue box disappearing from a distance. Sitting on a bench at the other end of the garden, he smiled to the Doctor.

“And off you go! It’s so weird…having heard all those stories and wondering whether it’ll all turn out well…but I already know at the same time. Plus, you’re here, so…”

The Doctor grinned.

“See? Promised and delivered, Georg.” The Doctor got up and turned brightly to look at Georg.

“Well, I’m his godfather after all…I mean, godmother.”

He grinned at her. She bounced off and beamed at him.

“So…would you like to try?”


	2. Two Kinds of People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor takes Julian and Thuỷ to the distant past to show them the Earth at ist beginning, the first forms of life and the evolution of humanity.

Julian and Thuỷ gazed in amazement at the many controls of the console and the moving column in the centre of it moving up and down as the TARDIS was travelling through time and space. Meanwhile the Doctor continued to dance around the six sets of the console flipping levers and pressing buttons.

“Why are you dancing around like that?” Thuỷ wondered as the Doctor passed the two humans for the fourth time in a row.

“Normally it’s meant to be piloted by six people,” The Doctor called over the loud _Vworp Vworp Vworp_.

“Then why are you alone in here?” Julian screamed back.

“I stole it.”

The TARDIS made a loud thud causing the three of them to nearly lose their balance.

“Ha! There, we landed!” The Doctor called out cheerfully.

“You…stole it?” Thuỷ asked incredulously.

“I did, yes; a long time ago with my granddaughter. I was a different man back then…”

“Why did you steal it?” Thuỷ stared at the Doctor with a frown and the hint of a smile.

The Doctor stopped in his way and looked to the console with a serious and somehow sad expression as if he remembered something troubling.

“I, uh… I just did,” he said quietly. “Anyway…”

He ran excitingly to the double doors of the TARDIS. Turning around, he grinned at them.

“Where are we?” Julian asked anxiously.

The Doctor just smiled and opened both doors. Stunned, Julian and Thuỷ approached the entrance to gaze out towards space! They could see the sun glowing brightly with small meteorites circling around it. And there it was: a planet; scarred with orange-glowing rivers of lava and covered by a surface of brown barren rock.

“That’s Earth,” the Doctor said standing behind them.

“Earth as it was 4.000.000.000 years ago. And something crucial is about to happen.”

David looked around, astonished. Could it be real? They had just travelled back in time! Just like that, to the beginnings of humanity’s home world.

“Is that Mars?” he wondered pointing at a planet to the right.

“No, it’s too large for Mars, look,” Thuỷ said, “And there’s another thing that’s odd. There is no moon.”

Now that Julian was looking more closely, he too saw that it was missing. And then, looking back at the planet, he understood.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, “It’s the planet that will form the moon.”

Thuỷ nodded.

“It’s called Theia.”

Silently, Julian, Thuỷ and the Doctor watched as Theia approached the young Earth rotating helplessly around the sun. And then, after a while, it happened. The two planets collided. Out of instinct, Julian stepped back shielding his eyes with his arm but he felt nothing. He also couldn’t hear anything. It was so weird facing the empty vacuum of space where no pressure could ripple the air and no sound could be heard.

Julian took out his smartphone which he had brought with him and filmed the event. Because when would he ever have this opportunity again? Now he had proof that he was actually there.

“How can we even breathe with the doors open?” Thuỷ wondered as she too took out her phone to make pictures of the crash.

“Air shell around the TARDIS,” the Doctor replied making a gesture to form a circle.

As Julian finished filming, he opened WhatsApp only to realise that, of course, there was no internet connection 4.000.000.000 years before his time. He cursed his generation for being so used to being online 24/7 that even on such a fantastical trip like this, he would quite naturally send photos to his family.

The Doctor who had observed him, took the phones from him and Thuỷ and took his metal rod from his pocket.

“I can help with that,” he proclaimed.

“What, with that spanner of yours,” Thuỷ questioned doubtfully.

“Sonic screwdriver,” the Doctor said as if it was obvious. The thing buzzed continuously as the Doctor moved it over the two smartphones. He then returned them to his travelling companions.

“There you go, universal roaming. You can make phone calls throughout time and space. And a few additions a well. Frequent flyer’s privilege.”

Julian stared incredulously at his phone: the display now showed him that he was in the year 4.000.000.000 BC during the Hadean eon. His clock was still set on the time that he left 2018. There were a few new apps on his phone including a universal map app that showed him the map of not only every world he was on but also the continental form of the time period he was in, complete with information of nearby civilisations and territories of hunter-gatherers and nomads. His weather app had also been modified now showing the local weather throughout time and space and the prediction for the rest of the week. An app with a blue background just said TARDIS where you could phone the Doctor.

“You have a phone?” Julian asked.

“Yes, of course, I have a phone, Julian. Who would I be without a phone?”

Julian grinned and turned back to his smartphone to send the video to his parents contact group. A few seconds later, a smile emoji appeared from his father along with another picture of a street. His phone rang.

Excitingly, Julian accepted the call.

“Dad?” he asked incredulously.

“Julian! How are you? The Doctor told me he was taking you on a trip. Where and when are you?”

He sounded cheerful.

“Uh, we are in 4.000.000.000 BC. I just send you a video of Theia colliding with Earth. What am I even talking about, I’VE TRAVELLED TO THE PAST!”

He cried the last word aloud and laughed, just laughed hard. His father laughed as well.

“You won’t believe this, Julian, but the Doctor also took us on a journey. Lena and me.”

With Lena, he meant his mother, Jelena.

“When are you?” Julian asked. “No, let me guess: Korea, sometime before the separation.”

“1905,” his father said. “The Japanese are showing their presence more and more here. We’re in Hansŏng as Seoul was called back them. But we want to go further back, to the beginning, the kingdom of Kojosŏn, 2300 BC.”

“2300 BC? That was the time when Emperor Yao was said to have ruled, one of the legendary Five Emperors.”

“I know. Well, enjoy your trip.”

“You too, dad. And say hi for mum, will you?”

“Of course.”

They hang up.

The Doctor had watched them speaking to friends and family. No that they were once again paying their attention to him again, he clapped his hands and strove to the console.

“The air shell can also work underwater. Haven’t really done that often. Let’s go and see your ancestors, shall we?”

He typed some buttons and pulled the lever again. The TARDIS took off again…

* * *

“Okay! We’re in Chengjiang, China, 530.000.000 BC,” the Doctor said, “It’s the Cambrian Period.”

Julian and Thuỷ raised their eyebrows then they ran to the doors like little children. Julian opened them and together they looked into the ocean. The TARDIS had actually landed underwater! They had landed on a rocky riff. The water was blue, truly blue like those beautiful pictures of the Caribbean Sea. Amazed, they stared at the jellyfish gliding through the water. A group of creatures, 70 centimetres long, crawled over the ground like large rough woodlouse. Julian recognised them as trilobites. And then they saw it: 2 meters long and read like a crab. It had flexible lobes on the side of its body, a disk-like mouth, a large, fan-shaped tail and two 3 cm long stalk eyes.

“What is that?” Thuỷ asked.

“ _Anomalocaris_ ,” the Doctor explained. “one of the earliest arthropods; The ancestor to all insects, spiders and crabs.”

“It seems to be hurt,” Julian said. He took out his smartphone again to zoom in onto the creature. Yes, he could now clearly see the blood flowing out of its wound.

“Do you have to record everything?” Thuỷ asked him.

“Sorry, I just can’t resist it. When do you have the chance to actually see Anomalocaris?”

“Exactly, just enjoy this moment!” she told him though she was grinning.

Something had discovered the bleeding Anomaocaris: some sort of swarm.

“Are those fish?” Thuỷ wondered.

“The ancestors of fish, your ancestors. _Haikouichtys_ ,” the Doctor said. Thuỷ turned to him.

“Yes,” the Doctor said smiling, “that is the first ever vertebrate!”

The Haikouichtys swarm quickly approached the Anomalocaris which had stopped swimming and was slowly sinking to the ground. As the tiny fish, barely 2 centimetres long, dashed forward to pick the delicious flesh, the dying arthropod winced and made a wailing kind of noise, a call that signified pain. Eat or be eaten, the simple law of nature, Julian thought.

His phone hummed. Julian looked what message he had received and looked at a photo of his father and a man of about 45 years. Julian recognised him. He had seen a picture of the man before in one of his father’s books. It was Gojong, the last king of the Chosŏn dynasty and self-proclaimed Emperor of Korea, the last independent state of Korea before the Japanese colonised it. Julian wondered what his father must have done to be granted a picture with the Emperor at his side. Surely, the Doctor had played some role in this.

Julian looked to the Doctor now returning to the console.

“So, Julian, Thuỷ: do you want to go forward?”

Both of them nodded and the Doctor grinned.

* * *

As the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS, thick, warm air came flowing towards them. Curiously, Julian and Thuỷ followed the Doctor into a jungle of weird, fern-like plants that ascended high into the sky like the redwoods of California in their time. Between the plants they could spot one or the other swamp. A gigantic spider, as larger as a human head, crawled down from one of the tree-like plants. Julian was sure that, had it lived in his time, it would hunt cats for breakfast.

“When are we exactly?” Julian asked the Doctor.

“Kansas, 300.000.000 BC, Carboniferous period. You’re looking at coal, Julian.”

Fascinated, Julian gazed around and jumped back as he saw a giant dragonfly zoom over him towards the ground picking up its prey, a small lizard.

“Woah, what’s that?” Thuỷ suddenly whispered crouching down. Julian followed her gaze and spotted a truly weird creature that none of his prehistory books had ever mentioned: it walked upright on two legs and had the basic stature of a humanoid. It’s face was still a bit long like that of a reptile.

“Aha,” the Doctor whispered. “That is the ancestor of the first intelligent species to roam your world. Yes, you heard right, you humans were not the first to form civilisations on this planet. That creature will evolve into something that will be known as a Homo Reptilia or, more commonly, a Silurian, which is actually inaccurate as the Silurian period is actually already behind us.”

“That… being… will build cities?” Thuỷ asked. “But why did nobody ever found any indication of that?”

“Well, think about it,” Julian replied, “They were built and abandoned millions of years before our time. It’s likely they simply eroded or got crushed when new mountains formed or something.”

“Exactly,” the Doctor said, “come, I’ll show you what they looked like.”

* * *

A few minutes later – well, from their perspective anyway – they landed again. They now stood in a fern prairie surrounded by a dense forest. And in the distance, a large city could be seen with a magnificent skyline. Flying cars were moving between the towers as tiny little dots.

“152.000.000 BC, the Golden Age of the Silurians,” the Doctor said.

“87.000.000 years later, an asteroid will impact Earth and that will be the end of the dinosaurs. The Silurians will go underground hiding in large cities deep beneath the surface. They will be rediscovered by humans several times. I was there when it happened, once in Victorian London of 1888, then in 1970 at Wenley Moor and then in 2020 in Wales.”

Thuỷ shook her head: “Unbelievable… so when do we begin?”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows and smiled.

“ _That_ is where I’m taking you next: on a journey through humanity’s beginnings.”

* * *

“Behold… Spain,” the Doctor said as they stepped into a dense jungle that looked more like a landscape of the Congo or something.

“Spain?” Thuỷ asked laughing.

“You know, it’s amazing! One is aware of course of continental drift and changing landscapes but it is still unbelievable.”

Julian closed the TARDIS doors and caught up to the other two.

“It’s 13.000.000 BC and here we find the earliest ancestor of humans and apes.” the Doctor told Thuỷ who was walking alongside him. Julian ran up to them and walking next to her. Suddenly the Doctor signalled them to stop. Hiding behind a row of ferns, the three time travellers watched as a group of small apes about as big as modern-day chimpanzees brachiated through the forest. Then they stopped and looked around unsure.

“Birds must have caught our sight,” the Doctor mused looking up towards the sky.

“What are they?” Julian asked. “I’ve read an article that a species of ancient apes had been found on the Iberian Peninsula but I don’t remember the name.”

“They are called _Pierolapithecus_ ,” the Doctor explained. The apes were now making a certain type of sound.

“They are saying to each other that there’s an unknown danger.”

“You can understand what they are saying?” Thuỷ asked doubtfully.

“I speak Ape,” the Doctor merely responded.

“No, you don’t!”

“I speak everything!”

The Doctor rose up and slowly approached the group of Pierolapithecus by making weird sounds that somehow resembled the apes’ ones. They tilted their heads confused, but then they seemed to calm down and the first were even encouraged enough to climb down the trees.”

Glancing at each other, Julian and Thuỷ stood up and joined the Doctor again.

“I just told them that we come in peace,” the Doctor said.

“Oh, I can see that,” Julian said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

They crouched down and the apes came closer. One young male carefully went up to Thuỷ and stretched out his hand touching her glasses. Thuỷ giggled at that. The ape took a small branch from the ground and moved to the stem of a fallen tree.

“They’re using tools!” she whispered to Julian.

“Of course they are,” Julian whispered back. “Modern-day chimps and Orang-utans likewise use them.”

The ape stretched out his free hand.

“…I think that he wants you to join him, Thuỷ,” Julian observed.

She looked at him, but then slowly went over to the young ape. He dug the branch into a hole in the stem and pulled it out again. Julian who had joined his friend understood.

“He’s catching ants.”

Indeed. Hundreds of little ants ran along the stem. The ape looked at Thuỷ and then presented her the branch. Julian beamed.

“Look, he’s inviting you for lunch,”

“Very funny,” she said to him but nonetheless took the branch and picked up some of the ants with her mouth.

“Hmmmm, they’re actually delicious,” she observed. She took the branch again and retrieved some more ants and presented them to the young ape. He took them and tucked in.

They stayed a little longer with the Pierolapithecus group and learned that they actually knew which plants could be used to heal a sick group member! It slowly dawned on Julian and Thuỷ that human arrogance had long prevented them from accepting a certain degree of intelligence in their ape relatives and ancestors.

Finally, the Doctor told them that it was time to move forward and they said their good-bye to the group of apes.

“Aww, it’s a pity. I quite like them,” Thuỷ said as they were making their way back to the TARDIS.

“Who knows, Thuỷ,” Julian said grinning, “you could just have lunch with your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.”

Thuỷ nudged him in the arm grinning.

* * *

The TARDIS made its usual _thud_ as it landed.

“Now here’s a lady I want you to meet,” the Doctor said excitingly as he ran to the doors. They stepped out onto a plain of high, yellow grass. Sparingly, several trees were filling the plain.

“Who is it you want to show us?” Julian asked.

“Dinkinesh,” the Doctor said, “also known as Lucy.”

“You mean,” Thuỷ asked excitingly, “the Australopithecus woman that was found in 1974?”

“That’s her,” said the Doctor. “And on this day, about 3.000.000 BC, she’s going to die. This is her last day. Nobody knows how she died. Now we’re about to find out…”

The hit behind a rock to observe the group of Australopithecus. One of them, a young female, was climbing down the tree when she suddenly slipped, from about 12 meters in hight. Thuỷ put her hands in front of her mouth as she watched the young woman trying to absorb the fall by landing on her feet. But then she fell forwards. She stretched out her arms but it was to no avail as she landed somewhat distorted on her right side. Her head smashed on the floor. All of this went so fast. The rest of the group carefully but quickly climbed down and gathered around Lucy’s dead body. One of them took her face in his hands and examined her closely, checked her eyes and mouth.

“They’re checking whether she is still alive,” Julian whispered. “They actually seem to care whether she’s dead.”

“Yes, of course they are, what did you think?” the Doctor asked almost appalled by Julian’s lack of belief.

The group stayed around the dead body in silence. Then, after a few minutes, they turned around to walk away, on two legs, very much like humans. Apart from the fact that they looked like slightly too large chimpanzees, their walk was so human that it almost seemed as if these were actors in masks.

The Doctor slowly approached Lucy’s body with Julian and Thuỷ following him. Taking out his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor moved it over the body then examined his findings.

“Massive broken bones at the shin, the knee and the waist…severe injuries at the right upper arm and the rips; she has massive internal bleeding.”

He kneeled beside her, his face full of sadness. He moved a hand to her face and closed her eyes.

* * *

Back in the TARDIS, the trio sat on the chairs near the console (why weren’t they directly in front of it, Julian wondered) silently for a while. Then the Doctor stood up and flipped switches and danced around the console again bringing the TARDIS further into the future. As they stepped out, they found themselves in a jungle again.

“This is Laos,” said the Doctor, “63.000 BC. There are many caves in the hills and mountains nearby.”

They made their way forwards until they heard a rustling and out of the jungle came a woman. She wore nothing except a thing string around her waist. Julian wondered why she wore that string anyway if she didn’t use it to hide her vagina. Right then he felt his member swelling. The woman looked fabulous: her dark skin, her very full breasts which were not small. Her face was beautiful and her eyes sparkled with life. In her right hand she carried a spear made out of bamboo.

She had seen them and looked at Julian and the other, her eyes wandering upwards and downwards again. Then another rustling could be heard as other humans appeared.

“Dlahe?” asked one of them, a man, addressing the woman. She continued to stare at the time travelling trio. Julian mused as how strange and silly they must appear to these prehistoric group of people: weird rosy skin, the things they wrapped themselves in…

“Who are you?” the woman called Dlahe asked.

“It’s all right, were new here,” the Doctor replied taking charge. “I’m the Doctor, this is Julian and this is Thuỷ.”

“I’m Dlahe,” she said. She gestured to the man next to her. “This is my older brother Itšhaw.“

The man nodded.

“I see you carry no spears,” Itšhaw observed. “Are you having trouble making them?”

His voice was friendly, helpful.

“Uh, well, yes, sort of…” replied the Doctor flipping his hands as he said that.

“Like I said: we are new to the region. Do you know where we could stay for the night?”

Dlahe smiled. “There is a series of caves that way. We were heading back. Would you like to join us?”

“We’d love to,” Thuỷ said.

“Yes, thank you,” Julian added.

Dlahe smiled again and gestured in a certain direction as an invitation to join her. She then called “Come,” to the other members of the group and they proceeded to march on. Julian tried to count how many they were. Five men and six women. Two of the women and one of the men carried small children in a baby carrier. One of them, a girl about five years old, nursed on the woman’s breast as they moved on.

“Doctor?” Julian asked, “how come we understand them? Surely, they are speaking quite a different language than we are.”

“That’s the gift of the TARDIS,” the Doctor said overjoyed, “translates everything for you. Except Gallifreyan, my native language.”

Julian raised his eyebrows but the Doctor just smiled and moved on. Julian took out his smartphone and clicked on one of his new apps that could not only identify any language of any time and location but also provide a complete grammar of said language. Apparently, this local tribe just called it _Yak'a_ _džan_ which meant _our language_ but it had quite a complex agglutinative grammar.

About half an hour later they reached the cave. More people were waiting here having gathered things like berries and eggs. The hunters unloaded the animals that they had caught and Dlahe gathered wood and stones to make a fire. One of the men called Fadža took a piece of bamboo and proceeded to cut the meat.

After a while, they all sat around the bright fire eating quite delicious meat. Freshly caught, along with berries, fungi and eggs. Dlahe also made a paste of bone marrow and fat which Julian and Thuỷ dared not to touch as they weren’t sure whether they could digest this without getting stomach ache.

The children meanwhile, between 4 and 9 year old were playing amongst themselves. Every now and then, a child would run up to its mother to take a snack. Soon, the group became more cheerful as their stomachs filled. They were laughing and joking. Some proceeded to make bags from the fur of the animals they had hunted. Others were going out to make new bamboo spears. Yet others were having something else in mind. Julian and Thuỷ were sitting on a big rug of fur next to a wall listening to Dlahe telling them how she and her clan group had travelled through this land ever since she was little. How they her ancestors had followed the great herds of animals until they came to this forest where it was moister than ever. Branches from wood quickly degraded in these lands. Fortunately they had come across these tall green plants, the bamboo. It was suitable for almost anything.

Julian spotted Fadža and another woman named Khotsu following three women who were heading towards the inner parts of the cave laughing and kissing touching each other’s lips, breasts and vaginas. Itšhaw who had had a long and joyful discussion with the Doctor took him by the hand and lead him to some secret spot he had in mind.

Dlahe glanced at Julian and Thuỷ and smiled as her eyes glanced down cheekily at his trousers.

“Aww, look at that,” she said teasingly. “Are you lonely, Julian?”

“Lonely?” he asked somewhat confused.

“Well, your dick is anyway,” Dlahe proclaimed and, with surprising ease, opened Julian’s trousers and removed his pants. Julian couldn’t move, he seemed to be in a trance. This wasn’t at all like he would have expected this to go. So…direct…forward.

Thuỷ choked on the water that ran through these parts of the cave she had been drinking out of a cranial bone. Coughing for a while, she eventually calmed herself while Dlahe had proceeded to rub him before taking his member in her mouth. David moaned. He wasn’t very experienced yet. Actually he wasn’t experienced at all, even though he did have many female friends throughout his school time and the university, before he had met Thuỷ, he hadn’t really considered going that direction. And although they were meeting frequently outside of class, in the canteen and on events like poetry slam, they weren’t really a couple yet. They had excellent chemistry together but as of yet, Julian hadn’t had the courage to ask her out. She meanwhile had already had a boyfriend during her time at school but it didn’t hold for long.

Dlahe glanced up at Thuỷ who was still staring incredulously at the scene before her eyes. Dlahe let go of Julian’s penis and looked to Thuỷ with a teasing smile.

“Why don’t we share, Thuỷ?”

Thuỷ raised her eyebrows as Dlahe made space so Thuỷ could exchange position with her.

“I can see you want it too!”

Thuỷ bent over Julian who meanwhile was lying on his back and kissed him passionately.

“I can’t believe it took us 63.000 years to hook up,” she whispered between kisses. They began to remove their clothes while they kissed. Julian felt how Dlahe fully removed his shoes, socks, trousers and pants while kissing his legs and feet. When Thuỷ and Julian finally were fully naked, she went up his body and joined Thuỷ as they kissed him all over his face nibbling at his ears. Then Dlahe moved down again but now she focused on Thuỷ kissing her neck and finally suckling her nipple.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have anything in there,” Thuỷ teased. Things were heating up. From other parts of the cave, Julian could hear other moans and groans and the occasional “Yes! Yes!” Dlahe wasn’t holding back and soon all three of them exploded several times as they were so passionate and it was so wonderful, hot and arousing that they didn’t dare to stop after the first climax…

* * *

When Julian awoke next morning, he found himself next to Thuỷ. She and Dlahe were still asleep with the latter cuddling at Thuỷ’s breast. Slowly, the group came out of their sleep. Julian and Thuỷ awkwardly dressed in their modern-day clothing which somehow felt tight. At the end, the three of them had fallen asleep fully exhausted but happy and satisfied. Now it seemed like so far away already.

A few meters away, the Doctor was adjusting his bowtie. Julian wondered how much fun he did have last night. The sexual openness of these people was something that Julian came to admire. He felt that not even the most progressive person of his time would view sex and sexuality so simple and natural as these humans did.

The hunters around Dlahe, Itšhaw, Fadža and Khotu took Julian, Thuỷ and the Doctor with them next day. They were all very cheerful today, likely due to many of them having such a hot night. Fadža and Khotu were having the most fun as he was constantly tickling her and she – and her baby which she carried with her – burst out in a stream of giggling and laughter that Julian wondered whether they would catch something at all today. Dlahe too was having fun. She had discovered his smartphone and although she merely laughed at the terms with which Julian described the phone and its functions, she was nonetheless very interested and it turned out that she was quite a good photographer. Seven minutes later, Julian had the content of an entire new album on his phone (which practically didn’t matter anymore though as the Doctor had turned it into a superphone). She also had the Doctor made a picture of their group along with Thuỷ and Julian at her side. Now and then she also took Thuỷ’s glasses and tried them on finding it fascinating that she couldn’t really see anything anymore while Thuỷ could see perfectly.

Then Itšhaw held up his hand and the rest of the group stopped. They could hear voices. But they were voices of quite a different kind of people as Julian soon understood. No real speech but monotone grunts and sounds. The Doctor’s face was written with understanding and, silently, his mouth formed a long _ohhhhhhh_. Then he looked at Julian and looked as exciting as if he had received his favourite Christmas present.

Finally they discovered who had made such noise. They certainly looked human-like but there was something odd about them. Dlahe, Itšhaw, Fadža and Khotu were totally mesmerised by these new arrivals. Three men and two women. The Doctor kept his hands on both Julian’s and Thuỷ’s shoulder keeping them out of the event.

“This is a very special day,” he whispered to them both, “Those are Homo Erectus.”

“Erectus?” Thuỷ repeated.

“Yes. Now on this day these two species meet for the first time. They will bond, stay together and eventually have a night not quite unlike the one we’ve just had.”

They watched as the Homo Sapiens and the Homo Erectus were now touching each other and exchanging gifts – necklaces, speers and other things. Two of the women swapped their babies and let them suckle of the other woman’s breast as a sign of trust.

* * *

“And we actually interbred with other hominid species?” Thuỷ asked impressed as the Doctor led the two 21st-century humans back to the TARDIS.

“Oh yeah, not just Erectus, also the Denisovan people who were very adapted to life in extreme heights. That’s how the Tibetans and other peoples of the area got their respective genes from.”

As Julian glanced one more time into the direction which they were just coming from, he noticed something odd – or rather, someone: a tall figure, a silhouette; its large head and cranial form reminded him of something of one of Edvard Munch… and the weirdest thing of all was that this creature seemed to wear a suit – the creature in black…

“Hey guys, do you see that?” Julian said turning around pointing at the direc – why was he pointing his finger again? Confused, he turned around. Nothing was there, except that they had just come from that direction.

“What?” the Doctor said joining him. “What did you see?”

“What do you mean?” Julian said frowning, “I didn’t see anything.”

“But you just implied you did,” Thuỷ insisted.

Julian gulped. There was a sick feeling inside his stomach.

“I…”

The Doctor just stared into the distance. Then, suddenly, he turned back to the TARDIS.

“All right, let’s move onwards then!”

* * *

They landed in the Rhône Valley in what would become South-Eastern France.

“We’re directly on the A43 towards Geneva,” the Doctor told them as they were walking up a hill. Julian and Thuỷ had gone to the wardrobe of the TARDIS, a gigantic room full of all sorts of clothing from every century and millennia imaginable. For it was quite cold in this period of Europe.

“And this is where Neanderthals lived, right?” Thuỷ inquired.

“Well, one of the places, yes,” the Doctor remarked. “They lived everywhere within Europe; they even made it to the Middle East. And not all of them lived in caves. Some lived in shelters made of furs or shrubbery and branches, some also made dwellings out of mammoth bones and tusks.”

The Doctor looked around.

“And there be mammoths here, believe me,” he whispered.

The cave they were heading for was on top of the hill where a rock formation could be found. A few children ran towards them laughing and giggling surrounding them and taking them by their hands.

“Hello,” the Doctor greeted them cheerfully, “Nice to meet you, I am the Doctor. These are my two friends, Julian and Thuỷ.”

There were about a dozen people living here and once Julian saw the full extent of the cave, his jaw dropped. There were not only modern humans living here. They were sharing their cave with a group of Neanderthals. The inhabitants of the cave were now getting on their feet eying them curiously. They each wore thick furs and shoes. Many had jewellery made of bones and coloured with ochre and a red colour. They also painted their faces though the humans used different tones and patterns than the Neanderthals did.

One of the Neanderthals approached Julian. Like the others of his kind, he had a thick nose and a prominent brow ridge. His chin was small, practically non-existent. Everything about him screamed: larger! Whether it was the skull, the chest or the hands; they were in all more robust than humans. On average, they were shorter though than modern humans.

“I am Fós,” he said, “you are… _Xózen_.”

“Julian; Ju-li-an,” Julian pronounced.

“We cannot speak your names,” Fós explained.

“I see,” Julian said and with an encouraging smile, he added, “It’s okay.”

Fós laughed, He patted Julian’s shoulder which was actually quite painful and led him to a spot close to the entrance of the cave.

“This is my mate, Kxèf,” he introduced a young Neanderthal woman. She pulled him into a tight hug and Julian noticed that they must be much stronger than humans.

The Doctor had already started a light conversation with a group of men and women making clothes at a fire while Thuỷ was approaching several humans and Neanderthals further in the cave. Due to the lack of light which was only coming sparingly into these parts, they had lit two fires. There were both men and women, Thuỷ noticed and not only adults, teenagers and children too. She watched in awe as they painted the different motives of animals and people in their daily activities.

One of the women had heard her and, smiling, nodded to her beckoning Thuỷ to join her.

“Hi,” said Thuỷ kneeling down beside the young woman. She was very pretty with long brunette hair and big, brown eyes and a cute nose.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Win'os. Who are you?”

“Thuỷ.”

“That’s a very lovely name, Thuỷ.”

A little girl of about three years old sat in the woman’s lap.

“That’s my youngest, Xuwam. My older one is probably playing outside with her friends.”

Thuỷ cooed to the toddler smiling to her and resumed to watch Win'os painting a scene of women with a pregnant belly and with babies and children. Suddenly, she heard a light noise of tiny footsteps and another girl came running towards them. She ran around so that she as in front of the two women – and without further ado, she let herself fall down into Thuỷ’s lap.

“Hello,” she said.

“Oh, hi you. Who are you?”

“Tšhala. This is my mum,“ she said pointing at Win'os.”

“I’m Thuỷ.”

The little girl who seemed to be around seven years old, proceeded to snuggle close to Thuỷ’s breast. Thuỷ put a hand on hair head and stroked her hair while she watched the painting procedure continue. Then Tšhala fumbled at the buttons of her shirt under her jacket and pushed her bra aside. Thuỷ raised her eyebrows and let out a soft gasp as she started to suckle her.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any milk. You have to go to your mum.”

“Okay,” Tšhala merely said as she crawled over to her mother and joined her little sister who also had begun to drink from Win'os.

“I can’t believe that she just went up to me,” Thuỷ murmured. Win'os glanced at her.

“Why wouldn’t she?” she asked as if this was the most normal thing in the world.

“You seem so…tight. A bit weird,” she let Thuỷ know while looking at her glasses. Thuỷ looked her up and down while processing what Win'os had just so casually remarked.

After she finished, Tšhala picked a spot close to her mother’s and started to paint herself. It took Thuỷ a while to see that she was actually painting the three of them: herself, Julian and the Doctor. Thuỷ wondered whether that particular painting would be preserved for palaeontologists to find. To sign their work, Win'os and her daughter (as well as the other painters at the site) dug their hands in paint and squeezed them onto the wall where an imprint of their hands remained showing to everyone who would one day come here: _I have painted that!_

While Win'os and the others went to put their painting stuff away, Thuỷ joined Julian who had subtly taken out his smartphone and was filming preparations for a very special hunt.

“Hey,” Thuỷ said.

“Hi,” he replied smiling at her. Thuỷ watched the screen as he paused to go outside and capture on film what would be the prey of the hunters.

“Fós asked me and the Doctor whether we would join the hunt,” Julian said as he adjusted the screen. “I told him that we were not the best hunters. When he asked why, I told him that our speciality were sea food.”

Thuỷ chuckled. But her smile turned to awe when she saw what the Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal hunters would be focusing on.

“Oh my god! Are those…mammoths?”

“Yes, they are!” Julian said as excited as she was. The Doctor soon joined the two of them as Julian stopped filming.

“Have you seen this before?” Julian asked him. The Doctor looked at him with a sad expression.

“In Africa, Australia, North and South America,” he replied. Julian frowned.

“Everywhere humanity goes, the mega fauna will cease to exist. Most of them have never seen humans before and therefore didn’t consider them a threat. And they didn’t have time to properly adapt to the new guys coming in.”

Julian turned back to those furry beauties walking calmly through the valley. He could see the two sites to this situation: on one hand, the need for these people to find foot to survive. On the other hand, the result that a unique kind of being would be gone forever. Some might say now that, in the end, nature didn’t care what we’d be doing to her. Life would always find a way to survive, even if humanity would engage in a nuclear war… a few million years later and nature would be back on track.

The hunters meanwhile made their way down the hill to start their hunt: the Neanderthals Fós and Kxèf together with two other women called Xé and Tsòp and two men known as Dhos and Zex. Joining them were Win'os, a woman known as Gilhaw and two men named Eara and Ķumduli. While they would be hunting, other men, women and children were gathering additional food for the group later: fungi, berries, herbs.

“You know,” Julian said to Thuỷ as they joined the gatherers, “I just spoke to some of the humans asking them what they were working on. They didn’t understand the question. Apparently, there is no word for work among these people.”

“Really?” Thuỷ replied.

“Yes. Perhaps they don’t consider it work. Everyone does what they can do best. By their own choice. For them, it isn’t work, it’s just their…I don’t know. Their abilities perhaps. And I like how open they are.”

“Yeah, Win'os remarked that I was tight,” Thuỷ told him.

Julian and Thuỷ learned a lot of the peoples’ eating habits during their gathering: which fungi and plants were good to eat and which were not. They returned from their activities with quite a large amount of food. Perhaps it was a cliché but Julian always had this image of this period as an unforgiving ice age where noting grew anymore.

* * *

When they returned, they saw that the hunters were just coming back. Win'os led the group who were carrying a massive load of meat and fur, enough to sustain the entire group for weeks! But as they saw the last ones return, they joy eroded. Fós and Dhos were carrying Kxèf who lay there motionless and bloody.

Thuỷ gulped and Julian put a hand to his mouth. The Doctor stood beside them staring at the young woman which the two Neanderthal men were now carefully laying to the ground. One of the mammoths had run her over.

Moments later, the entire group, humans and Neanderthals alike, were standing over a hole in which Kxèf was positioned in, surrounded by fur blankets, necklaces, stone tools and spears, ready for the next life. Fós began to sing, a beautiful song that somehow wasn’t translated by the TARDIS and the others joined in.

* * *

After having their first meal of mammoth meat in their lives, the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ returned to the TARDIS.

“I can’t understand why Neanderthals are still portrayed as being dumb and stupid,” Julian commented as they made their way to the console. “They seemed as intelligent as modern humans. There were even some Neanderthals who were painting! And they actually bury their dead.”

“And the humans are not violent at all,” Thuỷ added. “It’s always said that the humans brutally wiped out the Neanderthals…”

“…because it is always easier to project humanity’s current flaws onto a past culture than actually accepting that there are other ways to live,” the Doctor finished for her and nodded.

“But scientists of your day are slowly accepting reality… well, to a certain extent.”

The Doctor was already pressing buttons again.

“But how do humans become so violent then?” Thuỷ wondered frowning.

“Ah,” said the Doctor, “that is a story as fascinating as it is sad.”

He flipped the lever.

* * *

“Where are we?” Thuỷ wondered as they stepped out into a prospering green land with rivers and a great lake at the distance. They spotted many animals including elephants, giraffes, rhinos.

“It’s 7021 BC,” the Doctor said, “and we’re in the Sahara.”

“What?!” Thuỷ burst out, her jaw dropping.

“That right there is the river Chad,” the Doctor informed her and Julian.

“And why are we here?” Julian asked, “is it that village?”

He pointed to a set of similarly constructed houses on the roofs of which a dozen people could be seen going about their daily lives.

“Not quite, but it is essential,” answered the Doctor.

* * *

They stepped out of the TARDIS again.

“Now this is the same spot,” the Doctor explained, “We haven’t moved. It’s just 314 years later, 3897 BC.”

Aghast, Julian and Thuỷ stared at the landscape.

“What happened here?” Julian let out.

They were standing on a dune. Sparingly, small groups of grass were emerging out of the ground. Many rivers barely deserved to be called that anymore, some had even vanished completely. And Lake Chad seemed more distant than ever before.

“Climate change,” the Doctor said. “The North African climate cycle: When the North African Monsoon is at its strongest, vegetation in the Sahara and the nearby regions increase. The result here is a green Sahara. The last one – the one we just witnessed – occurred between 14.800 and 5.500 years ago from your time. When the monsoon is weak, the opposite happens.”

He led them through the barren landscape until they saw it again in the distance: the village.

“It starts in the Middle East. The land becomes a desert and the local communities – hunters and gatherers – are struggling to find resources. And those peoples who used to value and cherish life, are now surrounded more and more by death: the death of the land, of recourses. They become armoured, they joyful, open life crumbles, a lifelessness of feeling begins as hunger becomes stronger. Hunting and gathering becomes impossible. People become nomads following the herds of animals. Fear spreads and survival becomes the highest priority.”

Suddenly they heard noise. Then, one by one, a large group of men appeared riding on camels. They didn’t spot the three time travellers but were heading for the village nearby.

“So people begin to fight for survival,” Thuỷ added. The Doctor nodded.

“Parents can no longer nurture their children properly. Love and sex becomes secondary, lust and passion, and any expressive feelings for that matter – especially in men – is soon regarded as dangerous as it distracts from the main goal. And since things don’t get better for people in this region, this way of life is institutionalised resulting in the first states in human history… and the first genocide right here.”

With a serious and sinister expression, the Doctor watched the men coming for the village people. Thuỷ lowered her head.

“Why don’t we just change it?” she whispered.

“How do you mean?” the Doctor asked slowly but Julian had a feeling that he knew exactly what Thuỷ was getting at.

“Travel into the past, help these people,” she pressed, “take them to a better place, prevent patriarchy, prevent the emergence of violence and hatred!”

The Doctor looked at her with a sad smile.

“There are some things that are too big, too important for events later on. They just have to happen. I tried to change such a… fixed point in time once.”

He sighed.

“I fought time itself and I thought I could win. But time got the better of me. Things were correcting themselves. They had to stay.”

Julian looked the Doctor in the eye.

“Tell me, Doctor, just how is the universe, really? Is there any civilisation, any species out there that has managed to remain peaceful?”

The ancient alien looked back at him.

“The universe is big, vast and complicated. I know by far not every corners of it, even though I have been travelling for 900 years. Of course they are peaceful civilisations throughout time. But there are also as many violent ones, corrupt ones…such as mine…the Time Lords. The oldest civilisation: utterly corrupt and rotten to the core! Why do you think I ran away? Why do you think I’ve stole the TARDIS travelling the universe throughout time and space? Violence always emerges in these places: the barren ones, the wasteland. Earth, Mars, Skaro, Gallifrey. That’s where it happens, the discrimination, the hatred, the oppression. When I chose my name, when I started to call myself _The Doctor_ , I made myself a promise: that I would be this person. The man who makes people better. That’s who I am, or, at least, trying to be. And if there is one thing I can tell you Julian, Thuỷ, it’s that this is not the end. Neither your time nor the near future of your age! There is so much more to see, even amongst all this violent eruptions of fighting and conquering. I’ll show you!”

* * *

He brought the TARDIS to a halt and ran ahead. They emerged in what seemed to be a busy street.

“It’s places like Çatalhöyük, Harappa, Jericho or the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. And also: this place.“ He stretched out his arms as if he wanted to embrace the whole city.

“Knossos! City of the Minoans. We’re on Crete, 2000 BC.”

Julian and Thuỷ looked around, excited: they had landed at the edge of the city which appeared to have no walls and no guards to protect them. The blithesomeness of these people was infectious! Thuỷ noticed that the women were not covering themselves, not even their breasts were veiled! Their clothing was so that they were free for everyone to see and it seemed to be the most normal thing for people living here. As they wandered about the street, they saw pottery which was colourful and the paintings of the interior walls that could be seen through the open entrances were expressive depicting dolphins and dancing people!

Julian saw a woman who seemed to be a healer.

“Didn’t scientists found the statue of a woman holding snakes at Knossos?” he asked the Doctor.

“Oh yes, and do you noticed their error now?”

Julian understood.

“They mistook it for a snake goddess! They couldn’t even imagine that such an alluring statue could possibly be depicting something daily as a healer.”

He watched the young woman who somehow reminded him of Win'os…

“But it’s obvious when you look at it,” he Doctor explained, “the relationship between breast milk and snake milk, well, snake venom. Here we have a respected healer handling snakes for the medicinal value of their venom. I once met an archaeologist from the 171st century examining a Barbie doll. He was so certain that this had to be the statue of a naked goddess as, by his knowledge, the humans of the past were so repressive and prude that they could not possibly have created something like a doll with curves for pure enjoyment of children.”

Julian had to laugh at this.

“I’m tired,” he said.

“And I need a shower,” Thuỷ announced, “and fresh clothes.”

The Doctor smiled.

“Have I told you about the swimming pool?” he said leading them back to the TARDIS…


	3. The Great Cataclysm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having visited the past, Julian and Thuỷ are now taken into the future, to the 22nd century, only to find that the near future is not so bright after all...

It was only now that Julian and Thuỷ realised that the TARDIS being bigger on the inside was actually quite an understatement! It was gigantic! It took them a maze of corridors just to find their own quarters where they had a shower. They also discovered an observatory, a swimming pool and a gigantic library while they were at it.

After they had relaxed for a while – Thuỷ taking a nap in her room while Julian spent his time strolling through the insane amounts of book shelves of the library where he found books that were published in the ancient past and those that wouldn’t be published for, in some cases, a billion years! – the two of them found themselves fresh enough to join the Doctor in the control room for their next adventure in time and space.

The Time Lord pulled a lever and the TARDIS came to a halt. He beamed at Thuỷ like Father Christmas pulling out a very large present from his sack. Thuỷ glanced back with a big grin on her face.

“When are we?” she asked.

“Why don’t we find out?” the Doctor whispered.

With a glee, the young woman stormed towards the doors and pulled them open only to let out a disgusted yelp as a furious rain rushed into the TARDIS. Swiping her glasses clean, Thuỷ turned to the Doctor and glared at him.

“ _Where_ have you taken us?”

“Oh, sorry, stupid me,” the Doctor said rushing towards her pulling out his Sonic, “totally forgot the rain.” He ran his device over the wet spots on Thuỷ and she dried up.

“That really is a magic wand, isn’t it?” she observed still angry at him.

“Most sophisticated technology seems like magic,” the Doctor simply commented, “but this is science beyond magic.” He reached to the stand next to the doors and pulled out three umbrellas for them.

“We’re in Hamburg, a hundred and one years in your future. It’s February 6, 2119.”

They stepped out into a cold day with a grey, almost black sky above them. It didn’t look like anything familiar to the two humans though. Julian pulled out his smartphone and checked where they were.

“What the – ? According to this, we should be next to Dammtor Station. But this doesn’t look like it,” Julian said confused. They found themselves on the terrace of a building that had evidently not been built in their time. A bit to the left, they could see the old main building of Hamburg University but to their right, a massive dam seemed to hold off the waters of an enormous river that, according to the map on the smartphone, stretched all the way from the Rosengarten in the south to the Messehallen in the north.

Julian looked at Thuỷ who was equally shocked.

“So it does happen,” Thuỷ breathed out. “All the warnings, all the data the scientists showed us, what they showed those bloody politicians…”

“How many people must be homeless now?” Julian wondered staring at the mighty waves that clashed against the dam just a few meters away.

“I mean, half of the city has been drowned! Not to mention the economy of it all: metro stations, hotels…the town hall…”

They looked at the Doctor who, while overlooking the scenery with a sad expression on his face, didn’t really seem that shocked.

“Will it end?” Thuỷ asked him. It seemed the only thought she had left.

“Of course, it will end. Things always end,” the Doctor said looking at her.

“Otherwise nothing would ever get started. Come on then,” he said entering the building they had landed on.

“Let’s explore this time.”

Looking at each other, Julian and Thuỷ followed the Doctor down the stairs and onto the ground level.

“I thought it would be warmer,” Julian said.

“Oh, it is warmer,” the Doctor said, “the average world climate is 3°C higher than in your time. But of course there are good days and bad days. And the Gulf Stream has collapsed so Europe isn’t really as warm in winter anymore as it used to be.”

Now they could see that it seemed to be a new building for the Dammtor Station – only that the trains were now strictly riding above the ground. There were several small shops selling mostly food. But almost all of them sold either insects or noodles and occasionally rice dishes. No meat, no fruits.

They went to a shop near the exit of the station. First thing they noticed were the prices: they were all in D-Mark instead of Euros!

“What can I give ya?” the vendor asked them.

They chose a bit of everything and the Doctor took out something that looked like an ID card or something and held it before the man’s nose.

“Oh, sure, um, of course, sir!”

Julian looked at the Doctor with a frown.

“Psychic paper,” he whispered, “shows them whatever I want them to see. He’s convinced that we paid the food.”

Julian grinned.

They went out into the street and found that the rain was lesser now. On the streets were occasionally cars and Julian noticed the people behind the wheels.

“I would have thought we’d invented self-driving cars by now,” he commented as a woman walked by.

“Oh really?” she said, “Where do you think we are, bloody USA?” She laughed at her own joke.

“University didn’t change much,” Thuỷ remarked.

Julian scoffed. “Don’t judge a book by its cover. With everything that’s going on in here, I don’t think we can find something familiar anymore.”

Thuỷ tilted her head. “Well, only one way to find out.” She crossed the street. Julian and the Doctor followed her. As Julian followed Thuỷ to the building of the AAI Faculty, which was now enclosed in a wall, he couldn’t believe the indications of what he had just experienced. From the looks of it, Germany had become the equivalent of a third-world country compared to the rest of the world in this time period.

As Thuỷ went down the foyer of the faculty, she noticed that not many students seemed to be here. And most of the students she did see were young men. She headed straight for the library. At the entrance, she noticed a series of pamphlets on the wall. In both Chinese and German, it said: _The wonderful German-Chinese friendship! Tips from the New Silk Road_

Thuỷ took one and put it inside her pocket. The layout of the library was still similar to what she knew but the computer on the information desk was different as the console with which students could search for information. Thuỷ, having a hunch, went to the console and looked up _Cultural Revolution_. She raised her eyebrows in disbelief as the response came saying that there were no entries under that keyword. Shaking her head, she typed in _Tian'anmen_ _Massacre_ , _Kuomintang_ , _Liu Xiaobo_ and _Beijing Spring_. Each search had no results. But when she typed in Xi Jinping, there were more than 500 results! Apparently, an entire section labelled _The Great Leaders of the People’s Republic of China_ was filled with works on Mao and Xi. Thuỷ didn’t need to research any further. Already in her time, she had noticed media and politicians talking less and less about such things like human rights in relation to China. Word had it that Chinese officials had threatened to cut all economic relations to said countries if they were to continue bringing those things up. And now, a hundred years later, China’s influence seemed to have increased to a level that required even universities to conform to the Party’s politics. Thuỷ wondered whether there was still a superpower strong enough to compete with China. How was the United States doing?

“Thinking what I’m thinking?” Julian asked grimly as Thuỷ returned from the library. She nodded.

“I would like to know how the political situation is in this time,” she murmured.

“Ah,” the Doctor, who had been listening to the two of them, said, “I know just the place!”

* * *

When they got out of the TARDIS, they found themselves on the higher level of a tall building.

“Where are we?” Julian asked.

“Berlin!” the Doctor exclaimed. “This is where a very important party is being held. The perfect place to learn something about this era.”

“And how will you get us inside?” Thuỷ asked sceptically. The Doctor merely winked at her. They approached a set of double doors in front of which two guards stood.

“Hi, sorry, we’re a bit late,” the Doctor said. “Here’s our invitation.”

And he held out his psychic paper and one of the guards nodded. The three of them entered an enormous room where dozens of guests were sitting or standing chatting. Thuỷ peeked into a small room to the right where a couple of people were sitting on sofas laughing and talking while the evening news was running on the telly.

“ _Good evening,_ ” the news anchor said.

“ _The situation on Mars has stabilised. The green inhabitants of our neighbouring planet have ceased any kind of resistance against the brave human troops defending the colony. The Martians have fallen in line with Earth laws since 2097 when Pope Alexandra I. has anointed the first Martian bishop._

_In Caithness, Scotland, the first underwater mining facility has been completed. It is called The Drum. Work is expected to begin at the site within two weeks._

_Lu Chunhua, President of the People’s Republic of China, has announced that the New Silk Road has finally been completed._

_Japan and Australia have decided to construct more refugee camps for people fleeing out of Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. South America too is experiencing a large refugee problem. After having cut down 90% of the Amazon Rainforest, countries like Peru, Bolivia and Argentina are experiencing a massive migration invasion from Brazil which – along with several other African nations like Ghana, Chad or the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the aforementioned Asian countries – are considered death zones. As Federal Chancellor Markus Streibl has declared, this is not the a result of some climate change like the leftist-green forces have been preaching but a totally natural course of the weather cycles which return every thousand years. Humans are powerless against the forces of nature and it is a hopeless dream to think we could resist it._

_And finally, in Kent, England, the Bio-Cellular Institute of Dungeness is working on a revolutionary technology, the so-called ganger Project._ ”

Julian watched the screen, aghast. Not only had the worst case scenario actually occurred, it seemed that the government _and_ the media were enforcing the opinion that the very thing which had caused this situation was a propaganda tool by the opposition! Shaking his head, Julian went back to the main room where most of the guests were mingling about.

“Care for a pear?” he heard someone asking on his left. He looked up and saw an older, fine-dressed gentleman offering him a plate of sliced green pear.

“You should try it while you’re here!” the man said, “I just managed to actually acquire a few kilos, can you imagine?”

Frowning, Julian took the offered plate.

“What’s so difficult with getting pear?” he asked.

“Boy, you’ve been living on the moon, haven’t you?” the party guest replied, half shocked, half amused. “Fruits are a delicacy of the rich since the late 2050s! One kilo of pear costs about 4900 D-Marks!”

“Sorry,” Julian said, “history is not my, er, thing. When did we re-introduce the D-Mark?”

“Well, from the day, we had the Dexit, in 2041, with the first coalition of the CDU and the AfD.”

Julian nodded silently.

“Excuse me,” he said as he spotted Thuỷ making her way towards him.

“Charming place,” Julian said with a slight hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“Hm,” Thuỷ merely said looking around with disgust written in her face. Moments later, the Doctor was at their site.

“I’d like to leave,” Thuỷ demanded.

“Already?” the Doctor wondered, “but we haven’t even come to the best part!”

“The best –”

She looked at him with her mouth open.

“I don’t even know where to begin! The only thing that’s missing from the scenery here are replicants being killed.”

In that moment, the whole room began to cheer in applause as a man came onto the stage at the other end of the room and a voice introduced him:

“Ladies and gentlemen! Please join me in welcoming our beloved host, Minister of the Homeland and National Culture, Bernd Goppel!”

Goppel looked rather unimpressive as he stood there waving to his guests. As the noise faded out, the minister adjusted his microphone and began his speech:

“Thank you, my friends! Here we are again. Thank you for coming here in such great numbers! I was bestowed the important task of ensuring that this country was to be restored to its former pride, a pride that we all felt and which, under many past regimes in the last century was forbidden to properly express! But we’ve worked hard and tonight, I can tell you, my friends, that we have finally re-established the German _Leitkultur_ into this beautiful country again. Freed it from the invading forces that have flooded into Germany threatening to make it unrecognisable. But today, I say: no more! Under my guidance as Minister of the Homeland and of _National_ Culture, I promise that there will be no social experiments anymore! The Gleichschaltung, the co-ordination of sex and gender and the early sexualisation of pupils is over! The pugnacity, wisdom and leadership of the man and the intuition, gentleness and devotion of the woman, that will now again be part of the curriculum. We’ll put an end to the political indoctrination of teachers! Any student who notices a teacher trying that will have to report on that on a special website of the Ministry of the Homeland and National Culture. Furthermore, we will stop the flood of all those criminal refugees that still threaten our borders, be it chinks, coloured or greenies, they all will b –”

BANG!

As the sound of the gunshot echoed through the hall, people ducked and some screamed and Julian lifted his head again barely witnessing Goppel’s body falling backwards to the ground. It all happened so fast that at first he wasn’t able to process the emerging panic among the guests. He numbly noticed Thuỷ grabbing his arm while she herself was already holding the Doctor’s hand as he led his companions through the crowd ready to leave it all behind now. They had seen enough. Half way through though, the Doctor was stopped dead in his tracks by the two guards now joined by a third. Towering over the Doctor, the first guard grabbed the Time Lord and violently put his arms behind his back. Julian felt himself being thrown to the ground. He could hear Thuỷ trying to defend herself as she too was being put on the floor, her glasses a few centimetres in front of her face. One of the guards picked it up and rammed it back into her face narrowly missing her right eye.

The three were shoved away into a small room which seemed to be designated for the cleaners.

“So,” the first guard began after having checked them for weapons and only found their smartphones as well as the Doctor’s screwdriver and psychic paper, “let’s see: two men and a chink…”

Thuỷ glared at him.

“Are you one of those refugees fleeing from China, eh?”

“I’m not Chinese, you moron!” she shot back.

“Meh, whatever,” the guard said, “y’all look the same anyway. But you weren’t invited to the party. Which makes you the most likely suspects.”

He looked down at them.

“Who are you?”

Before anyone could say another word, three muted gunshots could be heard and the guards sunk to the floor. Before the three prisoners stood a tall man dressed in a long black coat and wearing a hat and facemask.

Still shocked from what they were seeing, none of the three time travellers moved a muscle. The masked man turned away and slowly walked away as if he merely had waved away a nasty fly. After a few minutes, the Doctor moved again taking back his sonic and psychic paper.

“Time to get out of here,” he said in a serious tone.

He began to stride back to the TARDIS. Julian and Thuỷ followed.

There was no sign of the masked man as they were coming around the corner. What they saw made them stop in their tracked however: There, around the TARDIS, five men had been posted to guard the blue box – and they were all lying on the floor in puddles of blood.

Carefully glancing around, the Doctor slowly moved towards his ship. The three were just at the door with the Doctor having put the key in the lock when they heard a gun clicking. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder as a gun was being pointed against his head.

“How did you get in here?” the man in the mask asked. His voice sounded hoarse, undefinable. “Because that,” the man continued, “couldn’t have been carried in here, there’d be no point, not at this altitude. It’s not ordinary then. And you…you’re not from here.” He shifted his weight a little.

“The only question remains…are you instrumentality or impediment?”

Hurrying steps were echoing through the floor on which they found themselves. Using the assassin’s short distraction, the Doctor quickly used his sonic to render the man’s weapon inoperable.

“What the h–”

Without skipping a beat, the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ slipped into the TARDIS.

“Hey! Wait!”

The Doctor ran up to the console and quickly flipped a lever. The TARDIS briefly shook like it usually did and with its signature _Vworp Vworp Vworp_ it dematerialised.

“What the bloody hell?”

The three of them turned around. The assassin had entered the TARDIS as well and was still standing there as if he had been frozen.

“Oi!” the Doctor called out. He walked over to the man just as the TARDIS was landing.

“I’m nobody’s Taxi Service, final stop, my friend, please exit.”

The Doctor opened the door and put his hand on the man’s back pushing him out of the TARDIS which, as far as Julian could see, had landed in a narrow alley. The doctor closed the door behind him and proceeded to push buttons and flip switches on the console.

“What are we doing now?” Thuỷ asked.

“We’re moving on!” the Doctor declared, “Many exciting places ahead of us, well, I say ahead…”

“Why can’t you just travel to the past and change it all?” Thuỷ continued. “You have a time machine; you could just change history wiping this dark future from existence!”

“It’d be difficult trying to change the politics of a whole world that’s fucked up decades ago!” Julian pointed out.

“Why not?” Thuỷ retorted, “The Doctor managed to convince an alien species to flee instead of simply enslaving us. And that wasn’t the only time: what about the Sycorax, the cubes, the Battle of Canary Wharf, the Zygons, all those threats to our world and the Doctor defeated them all! Tell me, Doctor, why did you save humanity from all those creatures?”

The Doctor looked down at the console, then glanced back up at her.

“Well, they’re precious to me…”

“Obviously not precious enough…” Thuỷ challenged him, “Because you still allow millions of people die in pointless wars, you still allow for fundamentalist groups to spread terror in the world, how? How can you let your precious humans allow leaving their own world in such a mess???”

She had screamed, cried out the last words at the Time Lord, her face red with anger and her eyes wet with tears. The Doctor approached her gently grabbing her shoulders.

“Because, Thuỷ Đàm, I cannot be your babysitter. It can’t always be up to me, your people, your planet. You must find your own way.”

Julian looked up.

“Then why did you save my family?” he asked. “You saved my great-grandfather and his wife and children from Dachau. And you promised my dad to watch over me, I know you did.”

Both Thuỷ and the Doctor were staring at him.

“You never told me that,” Thuỷ said irritated.

“And I’ve never been to Dachau,” the Doctor said slowly, “nor have I as of yet fulfilled Georg’s promise, Julian. I’d kn– ” He stopped mid-sentence. He stepped up facing Julian and put his hand on the young man’s cheek.

“Never…EVER…tell me about my personal choices in my personal future, understood? I cannot know.”

“If that’s so…” Thuỷ wondered, “Then what is the point of you? Of all this?”

“Oh, Thuỷ, believe me, I know how you’re feeling right now,” the Doctor said in a tone more serious and sad than ever before. “You think your home is already lost, that this is how it all ends. I know what it means to really lose once home. I’m a Time Lord…but I’m the last of the Time Lords. My homeworld is gone, erased from existence, I can never, ever, go back.”

He turned towards the TARDIS doors staring at them seeing something the two humans could not.

“That’s why I help saving Earth. Because this is my home too. My second home. I’ve been here more than anywhere else in the whole universe. Live here for a while, With a nice yellow car. But you: you’re just getting started, Thuỷ. And I’m gonna show it to go. The Golden Age of humanity.”

He turned back to look at her reassuringly. And she nodded. Somehow, he had made her feeling relieved.

“But not now, not immediately,” the Doctor announced, now again his usual childishly exciting self.

“First, we’ll go somewhere else!”

“Where?” Julian asked.

“Laugona,” the Doctor answered cryptically pulling a lever, “Castra Laugona.”


	4. Ermunaz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor takes Julian and Thuỷ to Germania where the Romans have established outposts. Here they meet a German turned Roman who begins to doubt the benefits of Roman colonisation...

Julian and Thuỷ again needed to relax a little. What they had witnessed in 22nd-century Hamburg had just been too overwhelming and, frankly, a bit horrifying. Neither of them had ever seen someone being killed. And now they had seen it several times! When Julian had first entered the TARDIS for his first proper time travel, he had expected it to be exciting. Yes, he now knew that there was danger out there after the short incident with the Oryutaaya, but overall he had trusted the Doctor to bring them to places where they would be rather safe. But then again, most of human history was quite violent and if he wanted to see German history, he knew he would have to prepare for that. But he supposed thinking of that was simpler than actually seeing it.

Thuỷ meanwhile had retreated to the library where she was searching for literature about 22nd-century Germany and world history overall. Julian didn’t ask her what she had found out for he had the feeling that she wanted to process what she had experienced alone.

But now they were back together again standing in the gigantic wardrobe of the TARDIS where dozens of fashion outfits from the ancient past to the distant future were available, sorted by region, then by century and year. Julian had already chosen his outfit: a nice-looking toga and a cloak which made him look like a travelling man. When someone should ask them where they were from, Julian and Thuỷ had agreed on a fitting, believable story they could tell. As for Thuỷ, she had chosen an Áo dài of the Đông Sơn culture from 1000 BC to 100 AD, a dress in two flaps, body-hugging with the upper part being coloured in red and golden-yellow and the lower part in black.

Dressed like this, the two humans went to the console room where the Doctor was steering the TARDIS with his usual running about while doing so.

“The year 9 AD,” the Doctor called out when they arrived, “quite a boring year, not much happening there. Well, two major events do happen: Wang Mang seizes the throne in China establishing the short-lived Xin dynasty. And the second one is where we’re going!”

He flipped a lever bringing the TARDIS to a halt. Julian couldn’t wait! He had been longing for this. As soon as the Doctor had told them of their next destination, he had practically screamed out of joy. Julian had always wanted to meet him and when the prospect of time travel became real, he was more curious than ever – well, in fairness, he thought this of all the past time periods they would visit: would it be as the ancient sources and the scientific view said it was? Or would it be totally different? Julian offered Thuỷ his arm and together they went to the TARDIS doors and pulled them open.

The noise of busy people filled their ears as they stepped into what appeared to be the middle of a Roman market place.

“I thought we were in Germania,” Thuỷ wondered.

“We ARE in Germania,” exclaimed the Doctor stretching out his arms, “this is Castra Laugona, right next to the Teutoburg Forest!”

Julian and Thuỷ stared around open-mouthed. Aside from the stands of the Market place there were atrium houses with thermae and artificial flowing water, flourishing gardens and, directly opposite from them at the other end of the camp, a forum made of stone.

“And those are Germanic people?” Julian asked watching the many men and women chatting and trading with merchants.

“They are gathering here peacefully,” the Doctor said as they strode across the market towards the forum. “Luxury goods are highly sought-after by the Germanic upper class: delicately wrought glass beads and elaborately designed jewellery which they exchange for food since they have no monetary system. Or they provide the merchants from Rome with goods sought after by Roman high society like fine hair of the Germanic women, especially the blond hair which is deemed as quite exotic down there.”

As they walked on they heard the noise of marching soldiers and the sound of hooves. Turning around, they found a company of legionnaires lead by a man on horseback. As the Doctor and his companions made way for them, the rider stopped watching the group intrigued. He dismounted and, with a nod to his soldiers, instructed them to move along. Taking his helmet off, the man approached the time travellers.

“Greetings,” he said, “you must be from far away. May I ask what leads you to this country?”

“We’re travellers,” the Doctor said pleasantly, his hands behind his back. “I’m the Doctor, this is Julian, that is Thuỷ.”

“Hello,” Julian said to the man. “What is your name, sir?”

“I’m called Arminius,” the man said, “prefect of the Auxilia. We’ve just come from Rome.”

“We were on our way to the forum,” explained the Doctor, “we intend to rest here for a few days before moving further south. Perhaps we can accompany you. I believe you know the governor.”

“Publius Quinctilius Varus, yes,“ Arminius replied, „please walk with me.“

The four moved on and Arminius took the time to look around the market which ended a few meters before the entrance to the forum. Just before the forum, a convoy had just unloaded a large chunk of wood over which a Roman tax collector bent to inspect the income.

“Write it all down,” they heard him say to a soldier at his side, “I want to know exactly how much wood has been delivered.”

“There’s the price of Rome’s presence here,” the Doctor murmured. “Where Rome gives it also demands.”

“It is according to the treaties,” Arminius replied. “Peace and securities do have their price.”

“ _Divide et impera_ ,” the Doctor quoted.

“Ah, you’re Celtic,” Arminius remarked. Julian frowned looking towards the Doctor who subtly shook his head.

They reached the forum and again Julian and Thuỷ let their jaws drop as they stared at what had been erected at the very centre of the forum: a gigantic leaf gilded statue depicting a man on horseback and that man was Emperor Augustus. A symbol of the power and glory of the Roman Empire and a message to anyone who came across this statue: that Rome was in charge here!

Inside the governor’s residence they were walking through elaborate corridors until they reached a giant hall. The office of Varus, governor of Germania.

“Greetings, Varus,” Arminius said as he approached the governor. “I bring with me friends from afar. They travelled all the way from the east and ask to stay for the night.”

Varus, a man in his 50s with a serious yet somehow alluring face stood and moved around his desk to greet them.

“Greetings. My name is Publius Quinctilius Varus and I have served in Syria before I’ve been sent to Germania Magna. As you can see we have already brought civilisation to these barbaric lands.”

Julian tilted his head and couldn’t help murmuring: “ _Contritium praecedit superbia_ ”

“You’re Sclaveni, I see,” Varus said.

“Actually, only on my mother’s side,” said Julian.

Varus took a step closer, his eyes had now fallen on Thuỷ with her Áo dài.

“And you, my lady, must be from Kattigara in the far-away land of Seres, if my knowledge doesn’t deceive me.”

“It does not, governor,” Thuỷ said, “I am indeed from that city which my people call Óc Eo. And while the nation of Seres may have made my home a part of itself, it still does have its own name: we call it Nam Việt.”

Varus nodded and turned back to Arminius.

“The Emperor has ordered me to make Germania Magna a Roman province. What’s your assessment of the situation in your homeland, Arminius?”

The young Germanic man in the Roman uniform looked back thoughtfully for a moment, then chose his reply.

“With respect, I am not allowed to judge over that, I am the Auxilia prefect, not a senator.”

The elderly governor smiled at that statement, a slight, somewhat presumptuous smile.

“Correct. But still it is your country, your people who are to be made a part of the Roman Empire.”

Arminius raised his chin.

“Only by blood am I still from Germania. However, my head and tongue have been transformed into that of a Roman citizen.”

Varus’s gaze became serious.

“Then I’ll hope that the blood will listen to the head.”

He stepped closer to the young prefect.

“I want you to scout the region. We’ll need to-”

In that moment, two soldiers entered the office.

“Governor, two thieves have been caught stealing goods that were meant to be brought here as taxes. They are being hold in the forum.”

Varus raised his head and brows. He swiftly strode towards the exit and turned the Doctor and his friends.

“Now you have a chance to witness Roman law in action, my new friends.”

He made his way down the corridor and the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ followed along with Arminius.

“Still believe the Romans act according to the treaties?” Julian whispered to the young soldier. Arminius shot a glance at him but remained silent. Down in the forum, a table had been prepared for the governor to sentence the criminals. Several soldiers were present along with a group of Germanic men, women and children including two elders who watched with grim faces as Varus appeared in the forum.

“This is nothing but pure colonialism like with the Europeans 1400 years from now and against in the 19th century,” Thuỷ whispered to the Doctor. “Varus, and therefore Rome, is taking the law in his own hand.”

“It’s not only that,” the Doctor whispered back, his hands behind his back and his face unnaturally serious, “Germanic villages live through subsistence economy, meaning there is next to no surplus. With the Romans taking goods from them, they may very well be on the verge of starvation if winter gets serious. That’s what been leading them to 'steal' things. And for one man to judge in a dispute goes deeply against the Germanic sense of justice. It has been the privilege of the old Germanic nobles to negotiate between themselves matters of justice. It is old customary law that is not written down anywhere.”

Varus held up his right hand and rose from his seat.

“I hereby sentence the accused to death by the cross!”

Roman soldiers dragged the accused away, one of them struggling and cursing at the Roman governor. The two elders stood there watching the scene with great distain but refused to interfere, likely due to the fact that it wouldn’t accomplish anything. Arminius standing next to Julian just stood there for a moment. Julian saw it in his eyes. Something was crumbling there inside him. His hands tightened around his helmet. With a sudden move he strode forward. The Doctor followed him with Julian and Thuỷ doing the same after sharing a glance at each other.

“Where are you going?” Thuỷ asked Arminius.

“I have to scout the area,” said the Germanic prefect. He marched determinedly back to his horse and mounted it. “I invite you to come with me. I intend to visit my home village.”

“We will come with you,” the Doctor replied. He too had noticed the change in the young Cheruscan. Julian and Thuỷ quickly followed the Time Lord as he chose three additional horses for them. With the Auxilia soldiers marching after them on foot, Arminius led the three time travellers into the woods. For Julian and Thuỷ they were rather ordinary Central European forests but for the Romans it was foreign land, exotic and scary, dark and mysterious, so different from the warm Mediterranean landscape they were accustomed to.

“I’m curious, Lady Thuỷ,” Arminius said as they rode through the forest, “what is the significance of this strange jewellery around your eyes?”

Thuỷ instinctively touched her glasses.

“They allow me to see better.”

Arminius raised his eyebrows.

“Gemstones that make you see better, eh? Sounds almost like a magical land where you come from. I take it that great blue box is also from Kattigara then.”

“Uh, no, that’s actually mine,” the Doctor chimed in.

“Hold on,” Julian said noticing something in front of them.

“Is that smoke rising from the forest?”

They all looked ahead. Indeed, smoke was rising up into the sky and it was too much for a simple open fire. Arminius quickly rode towards it with the other following. As soon as they came into the clearing, they stopped. The Germanic soldier dismounted from his horse and slowly stepped closer to the remains of a Germanic longhouse. The stench was unbearable and amongst the smell of burned wood they could also faintly make out the smell of burned flesh…

Arminius stood there with one hand touching a black beam of wood. His soldiers meanwhile took no notice of the scenery and were already moving on.

“Lady Thuỷ,” Arminius said approaching her, “You said that your people were conquered by the nation of Seres. Are they content with it?”

Thuỷ watched the young man’s features for a moment.

“Not all of them. Like the Romans, the Han impose taxes and destroy any attempt at independence. There…there is an uprising coming. Two sisters will lead it: Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị.”

„Very cheeky and good at playing chess,” the Doctor recalled.

Arminius said nothing but turned his gaze back to the burned village before him. Then he spoke, his voice trembling:

“When I first touched their heated stone floors, I thought I had discovered the greatest wonder of the world. How mighty must these Romans be, I thought, that they can make a floor this warm and comfortable? My brother and I were brought to Rome when we were just ten years old. I didn’t really know why back then. But now I understand. They took me as they took their taxes. Just another collectable from one of their provinces…”

“ _Zhī bǐ zhī jǐ, bǎi zhàn bù dài_ ,” Thuỷ quoted. “Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.”

Arminius looked at her thinking about what she had said. Then he mounted his horse again and continued his ride through the forest.

“Did we just help Arminius in making his decision whether he should betray the Romans?” Julian whispered to the Doctor as they followed the Germanic man.

“No,” the Doctor mused, “not entirely.”

They finally arrived where Arminius wanted to go: a small Cherusci village made up of longhouses. They dismounted and started to walk between the abodes as a man seemed to recognise Arminius.

“Ermunaz,” he called out to him, “is it really you?”

Arminius, or Ermunaz, took a deep breath.

“Father!”

The bald elderly man stared at the Roman armour his son was wearing. Then he saw the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ.

“Who are these people?”

“My new friends. They come from far away, they’re not Roman.”

“Definitely not,” said the Doctor.

“I’m the Doctor, these are Julian and Thuỷ.”

“Hello,” the two students said.

“You definitely aren’t from here,” Ermunaz’s father mused looking at Thuỷ in her elegant Đông Sơn clothes.

“I am Sigimariz, chieftain of the Cherusci and father of Ermunaz. Please, do come in.”

He gestured to the entrance of his longhouse and Ermunaz and the three time travellers followed him. Sigimariz prepared a humble meal consisting of something resembling oatmeal and a bit of meat.

“I’m sorry for state of the meal,” Simimariz apologised, “but recent…circumstances have left us a bit shorter than usual.”

“The Roman taxes,” the Doctor acknowledged helping himself to some oatmeal.

“Indeed. They keep squeezing the juice out of us like with their grapes out of which they make their wine! Tell me, Doctor, have you dealt with the Romans before?”

“Oh, once or twice…” the Doctor murmured. “I travel a lot, you see. Met these two on the way.”

“Lady Thuỷ comes from a land that is also been invaded by a superior force, father.”

“That seems to be the fate of people like us,” Thuỷ mused. “They say they come in peace and as allies but all they really want is to rob us. And if we protest, they have the audacity to tell us it’s for our own good.” She stared ahead seemingly lost in thought.

“…I long for the day to see all these strangers fall.”

Julian looked at her and she looked him in the eye. He looked away. Both his parents came from countries which had been the oppressor in more than one occasion. Arminius looked at his father.

“Spread the word to the tribes, father. Let them meet us tonight at the thingstead. Perhaps this armour can still be of good use…”

* * *

Many came to the thing assembly: the chieftains of the Cherusci, Bructeri, Marsi and Chatti. Now the men all stood in a circle waiting for Ermunaz to address them. Still wearing his Roman attire, he stepped forward.

“When I came to Rome as a boy, I used to believe that they did wonders. All they might, they technology, their achievements, I thought they could only be a help to us: roads, heated floors, they laws and their protection. We were to be made a part of the Roman Empire. But what have they done here? Everyone standing here knows that their laws are sharper than their swords! Becoming part of their realm means sacrificing everything we hold dear! It is time to act, now, before our swords have rusted away and our horses tired out. Before our freedom is nothing more than a word which meaning has long been forgotten!”

The men cheered and pounding their weapons together. The Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ silently stood among the Cherusci, invisible for the other tribes and watched the event. One of the Cherusci, stepped forward to address the crowd as well.

“Here goes Segestes,” the Doctor informed his two companions, “whose son is a priest at the Ubia altars in Cologne. He profits greatly from the Romans.”

“Please, men, listen to me!” Segestes said, “Rising up against the troops of Varus will only bring more suffering to all of us. They outnumber us greatly! And their revenge will be merciless. The Romans will burn our lands, kill the men and drag the women and children off into slavery! You should know this best, _Prefect Arminius_! Let us not be Rome’s enemy! We’ll all profit from the presence of Rome, once we are within the empire, things will change for the better.”

“I have a plan,” Ermunaz continued. “If we work together, we can defeat them! Will you follow me?”

For the tiniest moment there was silent. But a second later the men cheered yet again and Segestes looked desperate and he trembled. Qietly, the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ made their way to the village where their horses still stood. Shortly after they had reached the boundaries of the village, Ermunaz joined them on his horse.

“Let’s ride back to the camp. Varus will want me at his side as he dines. He trusts me. If we want to make our plan work, I should not stay away for too long.”

* * *

Back at Castra Laugona, the Doctor first checked upon his TARDIS which was still there.

“Good. I wouldn’t want it to be sold as modern art again,” he mumbled.

“Did that happen?” Thuỷ asked.

“Oh yes, in Pompeii no less, Vulcano day.”

They entered the forum and followed Ermunaz into Varus’s chamber.

* * *

“I can provide you with an escort if you intend to leave so soon, Doctor” Varus said as they sat at his table eating grapes and chicken wings, “we’ll be out of here tomorrow morning heading for the winter camp.”

“Thank you for the offer, Quinctilius Varus, but we prefer to travel by ourselves. We came here not only to trade but also to explore and your routes are not very fast. We three can move much faster by ourselves and take routes that a fully packed legion simply has not the means to.”

“I see,” Varus said turning to Julian and Thuỷ.

“I suppose you’ll be going back to you homeland again.”

“We’ll stay with the Doctor for a little while before that,” Julian replied. “He has great insight. He is more experienced than Thuỷ and I are.”

“Arminius,” Varus said, “Before we set out I’d like you to take your Auxilia ahead first to scout our route. There are again rumours of a riot floating around.”

Ermunaz nodded.

“I highly doubt that but nonetheless I will check out the situation, Varus.”

“To Rome!” Varus toasted.

“To Rome!” everyone said before sipping their goblet.

“I have to admit,” said the Doctor, “I will miss this lovely chicken. If you allow, Varus, I’d like to pack some for our provisions while we travel.”

“Please do,” said Varus, “we have allowed for the best cooks to accompany us. You’ll find you will enjoy them.”

At that moment, the curtains at the entrance of Varus’s chamber were opening revealing Segestes who looked like he had made haste in coming here.

“Varus! I come to warn you!”

“Warn me? What from?”

“A revolt! A conspiracy, an insurrection against you and the legions of Rome!”

Varus looked unimpressed.

“Who would be so suicidal to raise their swords against us?”

Segestes pointed to Ermunaz who was calmly sipping his wine.

“The man who sits with you at the table!”

Arminius looked at the Cheruscan noble and his look of surprise was very well acted.

“ _Fronti nulla fides._ ” Julian mumbled.

“He is right,” Ermunaz now said to Varus, an over-the-top sinister look on his face and his voice filled with sarcasm. “I will attack your legions on their march to the winter camp, destroy them and decapitate you myself.”

Varus tilted his head and a smile came across his face which turned into a loud laughter.

“I thank you Segestes for sparing me of this unbearable ignominy,” he said as if they just told each other jokes. “Please, join us for a goblet of wine.”

Segestes got unto his knees.

“Varus, I implore you! Leave me and Arminius behind! Chain us up and safe yourself and your legions!”

Varus got up to his feet, which was far more imposing than Segestes’s plea and all friendliness had vanished from his face.

“How dare you to believe I couldn’t distinguish between friend and enemy?”

The Germanic noble stared at the Roman governor in disbelief for a moment before sighing in defeat. Without another word, he backed out of the chamber before starting to make a run for it.

“You should watch out for him, Arminius,” Julian said. “I bet he’d say or do anything to get rid of you.”

“Well,” Ermunaz said, “we won’t be here for much longer. I doubt he’d travel all the way to Rome just to have his revenge.”

The Doctor got to his feet.

“We’ll better be off,” he said. “Come along, you two,” he added to Julian and Thuỷ. The three of them said their goodbyes and marched out of the governor’s residence.

“For a moment I wondered whether you would encourage us to watch the battle from afar,” Thuỷ mused.

“No, that would be horrible!” the Doctor said. They reached the market place where the merchants were already starting to pack everything for the voyage home.

“I assume these poor guys won’t survive either,” Julian said watching them. The Doctor shook his head.

“And in the end, Segestes will still have his revenge. Only six years from now, he’ll send his own daughter, Thusnelda, away who had just become pregnant with Ermunaz’s only son. Two years after that, he’ll kill Ermunaz in person. His attempt at a Germanic unity ultimately failed.”

“This wouldn’t stop 19th century nationalists to glorify Ermunaz as the first German though.” Julian commented.

“We’ll get to that in time,” the Doctor said opening the door to the TARDIS.

“For now, I wish to make an order before we embark on our next journey.”

“An order?” Thuỷ wondered as the Time Lord ran to the console and quickly typed something on the keyboard.

“What’s Kerblam?” Julian wondered. The Doctor grinned.

“Do you have a weakness for hats?” Thuỷ asked looking at the monitor where the Doctor had just ordered a fez.

“I love fezzes. Fezzes are cool!”

Julian and Thuỷ looked at each other chuckling.

“So,” the Doctor said. “Thuỷ! You said you wanted to see the future! I have something for you. I daresay you like it!”

He pulled the lever and the TARDIS set off…


	5. The Golden Age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The 51st century! Golden Age of humanity. From Silicon Worlds to space cruise ships for the rich and a world that has fought for Independence...Julian and Thuỷ learn of the Variety of life in this time period. And a very special place for the Doctor with a good source of potassium...

The obelisk-like towering structures shone in the most beautiful colours they had ever seen! Aside from the crystal towers, read-and-blue quartz flowers were spreading out everywhere and the weirdest of creatures vaguely resembling snail shells seemed to be grazing about.

“Welcome to the silicon world of Asmoray!” the Doctor called out as Julian and Thuỷ were staring out of the TARDIS doors admiring the strange, almost glass-like world dipped in blue, lilac and red with a purple sky were two moons could be seen.

“Ooh, thank you, Doctor!” Thuỷ squeaked embracing the Time Lord while resting her head on his left arm (she could only barely reach his shoulder). The Doctor looked uncomfortable for a second but quickly calmed himself and for a little while, the three stared out into the landscape.

“Could we take a walk?” Julian suggested.

“Wouldn’t recommend it,” the Doctor advised. “Temperatures are between 100 and 500 °C.”

He turned to Thuỷ: “Wanna see more?”

“Oh, yes, please!” she said excitingly.

* * *

When they opened the doors again, they gazed out into a green landscape with a reddish sky from which millions of bright yellow fires seemed to rain down.

“Welcome to the lovely Modalu!” the Doctor announced. “She’s quite young, only 439,000,095 years old.”

“Oh yeah,” Julian quipped sarcastically, “Ever so young! Practically a baby, eh?”

“This world’s equivalent of the Silurian Period 440.000.000 years ago from your time,” said the Doctor. “In 499,004,920 years, this world will be known as Viettelevä in one of the most peaceful time ever in the universe!”

“Are those meteorites?” Thuỷ asked looking into the sky.

“The planet is passing through the debris trail of a long-period comet,” the Time Lord explained. “And those plants…” he pointed his sonic at them, “…are simple lichen and algae, the beginning of plant life on the surface.”

Thuỷ stared towards the sky in admiration.

“And I thought the 22nd century was far away but it’s nothing to the 51st century!” she exclaimed. “What’s it like now?”

“All in good time,” the Doctor said smiling while striding back to the console, “after all, we’ve got plenty of that. I’ve got so much to show you!”

He flipped the lever on the console and the TARDIS set off. A short while later they stopped and the Doctor typed on his keyboard. The giant screen next to the doors showed the schematics of what appeared to be a gigantic polish starship.

“The _Gilgamesh_! Galaxy class starship.”

“Oh, really?” Julian wondered. “Like the _Enterprise-D_?”

“Oooh, much bigger than the _Enterprise-D_ ,” said the Doctor, “On this passenger ship, 30,000 people are being present! And that’s mostly passengers, the crew is rather small, nearly everything is automatic and we’re ON IT!”

The Doctor raised up his arms as if he had just finished a marathon and ran excitingly towards the doors.

“Welcome…to the 51st century! 5072, to be precise.”

Thuỷ glanced at Julian who gestured for her to go first and she ran after the Doctor and soon after, the three found themselves in one extravagant cabin reminiscent of a five-star hotel! Everything was bright and clean but at the same time cosy and comfortable. There were several rooms including children’s chambers with two cribs and three bedrooms.

Julian looked perplexed at the Doctor.

“I think you might have made a mistake concerning our age,” he said.

“Sorry,” said the Doctor rubbing his neck, “no more cabins left, I booked a bit late, I’m afraid. Apartment for a three-parent family, children who have three genetic parents. You don’t have to use the cribs.”

Julian chuckled.

“No? I thought of using the changing table right away,” he said sarcastically.

“Are there any lower classes here?” Thuỷ wondered.

“No, not really, this is intended for the rich and beautiful, actually,” said the Doctor. “Civilian ships are much more cramped.”

Thuỷ stared at him.

“So basically we’ve landed at a party with this century’s Kardashians in the 51st century version of the Hilton!”

“More like the Hotel Connaught Apartment,” Julian commented.

“Who are the Kardashians?” the Doctor asked.

“Never mind,” Thuỷ waved him off. She went a large wardrobe in the cabin. As she came near it, some kind of scanner went over her.

“ _Height identified,_ ” a monotone male voice said. “ _Proceed with selection._ ”

Thuỷ‘s jaw dropped as, seemingly out of nowhere, a variety of evening attire materialised on what she had thought was a small stool.

“3-D printing!” Julian said shaking his head in amazement. Some of the offered garments were made to look more stunning and glamorous, others revealing and sexy. Thuỷ carefully grabbed one of the dresses. It was blue. Julia also came to the wardrobe and at once it scanned him and printed a set of dinner jackets.

“Still it’s the women who get the revealing stuff,” he mumbled.

“And here I was hoping that sexism had vanished by now,” Thuỷ said unsure of what dress she should pick. Julian took one of the suits.

After finishing dressing up, the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ made their way through a series of corridors and lifts inside them massive starship until they eventually reached the dining hall. Apart from a buffet and dozens of small round tables, a dance floor could also be found and music sounded from somewhere playing wonderful yet somewhat strange music that didn’t fit into any genre that Julian knew. Well, he supposed that this was one of the things that had come up in the 3054 years that separated him from his own time. He only vaguely noticed how the Doctor used his psychic paper to fool the nearby maître d' into believing that they were highly distinguished guests or something as he was far too captivated by the scenery in front of him. For there were not only humans among the passengers (who all looked not only stunning but very attractive – seriously, all the men and women looked superhot!) but also aliens of various shapes and sizes.

Thuỷ joined him at his side.

“What is it with the Doctor and crazy rich parties?” she said shaking her head.

“I’m sure we’re going to see the other side of this society,” Julian mused as they slowly moved forward into the crowd of people. The buffet was stunning but also appalling as it exposed the taste of this super rich class: there were rare animals being served among the dishes including tigers, orang-utans and sharks but also some alien ones including one massive piece of roasted flesh on a separate table as big as a blue whale! But also sea food and insects of all kind which made Julian wonder if grasshoppers and ants had taken the route of the lobster and caviar in that they were once used by the lower classes but had now risen up to highly expensive delicacies like pears had in 2118.

“You’ve got to try the tiger!” a red-haired young woman said wearing a body-hugging white dress that was pretty much at the edge of revealing her quite pronounced curves which as Julian noted seemed nearly unnaturally perfect. Standing beside her was a woman with dark skin and a likewise elegant body. It was only now that Julian noticed that he and Thuỷ were possibly standing out with their natural, not so numinously designed bodies. Even the men appeared to be equally strongly built. They even seemed to ooze a rather alluring scent, men and women alike, that made Julian feel a bit overwhelmed.

“Uh, thank you,” Thuỷ said in Julian’s stead, “but I think my husband will rather try the fish. We’re living near the sea, you see?”

“Ah,” the dark-skinned woman said, “From Zaruthstra, then, eh?” She paused. “No…don’t tell me: you’re from Dephys 49, aren’t you?”

“Exactly,” Julian said wondering whether he should continue as he had no idea what this planet looked like.

“Well, I’m going to help myself to some big cat then,” the redhead said looking at her partner who chose to remain at Julian’s and Thuỷ’s side.

“Oh, she’s so _wild_ , my dear little Annika,” the dark-skinned woman said, “still so _young_ …” the seemed to be lost in thought for a moment then stretched out a hand.

“Nwando Konstantinovna Takahashi Oyewumi,” she introduced herself.

“Đàm Phương Thuỷ,” Thuỷ replied.

“Julian Heller,” Julian added.

“How old are you two?” Nwando asked with a slight frown and a curious voice.

“26,” Julian said.

“21,” Thuỷ said.

“Oh,” Nwando gasped. “My, then you’re practically babies to me.”

“Perhaps you can give us a feed then,” Thuỷ replied sarcastically.

“Mmmh, I might just do that,” Nwando said seductively placing a finger on her chin as if considering the idea. Thuỷ ever so slightly recoiled looking uncomfortable at the thought.

“If I may ask, how old are you, Mrs. Oyewumi?” Julian asked.

“Oh, I was born in 3529,” Nwando said as if this were the most banal information she could possibly give.

“S-so you’re…1500 years old,” Thuỷ said stuttering a little.

“Like I said: you seem like babies compared to me. And my precious partner Annika has just become a “high school girl” with her 271.”

She held up a toast:

“Happy childhood!”

With an ever so charming but nonetheless haughty smile she walked away with her partner.

Thuỷ grimaced.

“If it weren’t for the fascinating aliens, I would steer the TARDIS out of this place this instant.”

“But you don’t even know how it works,” Julian said.

She shot him a look.

“Look at them,” she said watching at all these genetically-upgraded humans and aliens looking oh so perfect. “Some of them even have weird new limbs and organs: see that man with the tail? And that woman with three breasts? And they all look so stereotypical!”

“Strong, muscular handsome men and sexy, hourglass-shaped doll-like women; either a femme fatale or a beautiful girl-like object to be gawked at,” Julian commented. “At least they’re not all white. I wonder if they are conservative for their time period. They’re certainly richer than even the richest guy in our time can be. The gap between the rich and the poor must be like the gap between mortals and gods if they have the privilege of prolonging their life.”

“Ooh, isn’t it brilliant here?” the Doctor said from behind them. He examined the table with glee and pointed his sonic over some of the more exotic dishes.

“Doctor, what are we doing here?” Thuỷ asked irritated. He looked up.

“Enjoying ourselves for once! No slave traders, no battle and definitely no assassinations, believe me, I checked the _Gilgamesh_ ’s Home Box before I brought us here.”

“The what?” Thuỷ said.

“The Home Box! Like the Black Box on board a plane except it flies home with all the flight data in case of an emergency and future record show no such emergency. The Home Box never once left the _Gilgamesh_.”

Thuỷ looked around at all the fancy food, the people attending…

“I didn’t expect the future to be like this,” she said. “Or rather I hoped it would be different. But it’s still the same just even more so.”

Julian nodded.

“Yeah…As fascinating and bright as it seems, this is all just one giant space palace. And we’re among kings.”

“What is it like on Earth during this time?” Thuỷ wondered.

“Oh, you wouldn’t like it much,” the Doctor said. “Earth has become quite uncomfortable with the Ice Age that began 600 years ago. And there is no real political unity in human-controlled areas for 1000 years. In fact, there is no government on Earth and several colonies have declared their independence.”

“Through a fight?” Julian asked.

“Only on three worlds. One of them is Zaruthstra.”

“That woman, Nwando Oyewumi mentioned that world,” Julian said.

The Doctor smiled and turned running excitingly to the exit. Julian and Thuỷ followed him.

* * *

Thuỷ stood beside the Doctor who was typing something on the keyboard.

“Zaruthstra,” he said. “First colonised in 3868 and gained independence in 4711. You will like this!”

Thuỷ raised her eyebrows.

“Why?”

The Doctor smiled at her.

“Because this is the breakout: we are 361 years into the beginning of the Golden Age of Humanity that, in its entirety, lasts 3209 years. And here is where it all started. While it wasn’t the first colony to gain true independence, Zaruthstra has since then become the world of unlimited possibilities. From here, new thoughts of freedom and tolerance will spread into the galaxy that hadn’t existed for 1466 years!”

“Can we please stop with the numbers and see for ourselves?” Julian said with a sly smile. Thuỷ rolled her eyes as the TARDIS landed with a thud and the engines stopped. The Doctor looked at Julian and Thuỷ with a grin.

They stepped out onto the shore and found themselves right next to a city.

“The new capital of Zaruthstra,” declared the Doctor: “Ustsetserleg!”

The two young 20th-century time tourists stared excitingly at the dozens of container-like buildings before them stockpiled together to form a mishmash of a skyline with the occasional small tower in the middle. It looked more like a small city state of 15th-century Italy than a future settlement, maybe a futuristic version of San Gimignano. On the other side, a gigantic lake stretched all the way to the horizon where they could see the strangest of plants, red, purple and yellow, reaching high into the sky.

“What does the name mean?” Thuỷ wondered.

“It’s Mongolian,” the Doctor explained. “It means _The Water Garden_ ; See the forest surrounding the area? Most of the planet is still covered with it. Not much settling during the last 1200 years. No, the humans are just now beginning to explore this place and see the potential in its nature. While there has been a small amount of destruction to make space for the two major human cities on this world and a couple of small settlements, it has been and will be small in comparison to the destruction made in North America.”

“For real?” Julian asked.

“Come on,” said Thuỷ, “let’s see what it is like in there.”

* * *

They strode through the city’s marketplace which was filled with hundreds of people from all different backgrounds as they could tell. Some even seemed to have cybernetic alterations made to them like synthetic eyes or limbs and probably internal organs as well. There were also various aliens as well.

“What species are those?” Thuỷ said looking around gleaming like a little child on a Christmas market.

“Oh, let’s see…” the Doctor said rubbing his hands. He pointed to a being with purple and orange, fish-like skin and small headcrests running along the top of their heads. They seemed to be wearing breathing masks with a liquid inside them.

“Ah, that’s a Hath, fish-like creature, met them on Messaline in the 61st century…not an event I like to remember…I lost someone quite special there…”

He trailed off for a moment then steadied himself and looked around for point out more alien visitors.

“Those two are Lugalirakush,” he said pointing to two extraterrestrials with long crests, large white eyes and small mouths. Next to them were what seemed to be a group of alien soldiers who strangely seemed to all look the same and had bulbous heads like a potato and short stocky bodies.

“Ah, a Sontaran clone batch,” the Doctor explained, “probably on shore leave. They’re cloned, factory-produced, whole legions at a time. Literally made for battle.”

“And…uh…those?” Julian said referring to a large, bulky alien with thick, lumpy green skin, a long neck and an ugly baby-like face.

“Urgh… Raxacoricofallapatorian,“ said the Doctor.

“Raxo…I’m sorry, what?” Julian frowned.

“Raxacoricofallapatorian, they’re a mostly peaceful species known for their skills in math and poetry. I however have to yet meet a friendly member of their kind.”

Thuỷ tilted her head.

“Perhaps this is your chance…”

The Doctor smiled at her as they walked further through the market. Julian noticed a couple of soldiers guarding different areas of the marketplace.

“Local military?” he asked the Doctor as five of them were marching through the market towards them.

“No…” the Doctor said slowly while eying the approaching soldiers. “They’re clerics.”

Julian raised his eyebrows as one of the soldiers, a man in his mid-thirties, directly approached the Time Lord.

“I take it that you’re the Doctor.”

“Yes!” the Doctor said joyfully, “…and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t salute,” he said frowning as the leader of the unit did just that.

“Sorry, sir. Father Kirill, Bishop, first class. These are clerics Ada, Nephon, Mbagga and Taegŏn. It is said that you were helping the investigation of the fate of the _Byzantium_.”

“Yes…sorry…” the Doctor said with a sad expression. “Father Octavian didn’t make it…along with his clerics.”

“He was a good friend,” Father Kirill said. “I just thought that maybe you’d…”

He broke off.

“Anyway, we’re not keeping you, sir.”

He gestured to his clerics to move along.

“May God be with you, Doctor.”

“And with you, father,” the Doctor said. The bishop and his clerics went on their way. Julian watched them heading further into the market.

“So…just to be clear: the church has become a military organisation of faith…kinda reminds me of something.”

The Doctor looked at him.

“It’s not like that. But I too wished they’d let go of their guns.”

They looked around the place until they found a nice little foot stand selling fast food ranging from spring rolls to chips, sushi, sashimi, noodles and insects. Julian was particularly fascinated by the sushi here as it also consisted of fish and sea food native to this world with colours he never had connected to fish meat.

“Do you remember what it’s like in 2018?” Julian asked after a while as they helped themselves to their chosen dishes. “I mean…already it’s like a blur…like, if you’re on a really long holiday.”

“Well, we kinda are,” Thuỷ said with a shrug.

“But it’s only, what, our fourth trip through time and space? And already we’ve gotten so… _used_ to this. Don’t you find that a bit weird?”

Thuỷ thought for a moment before answering.

“Perhaps because, even though we’re 3050 years away from home, it’s still very similar to our society…”

Julian nodded.

“Yeah…except for the prehistoric times we visited…those were truly different…because there was no state; no patriarchy. No discrimination. I wonder whether we’ll get to that point ever again.”

He looked at her.

“Do you think we should stop? Travelling through time I mean?”

She shook her head and he nodded in agreement.

“Not a chance,” Thuỷ said. “There’s so many things I want to see! I need to know whether things get better.”

He tilted his head.

“Well, so far we know that there’s a least one big colonial and imperialistic period. I wouldn’t put my money on it. Small changes, sure…but fundamental? I don’t think so.”

A man and a woman in their thirties, sat next to Julian along with another woman who was about ten years younger than them.

“Hi,” said the older woman smiling at him. “What’s your name?”

“Julian Heller,” Julian said. “What’s yours?”

“Farinaz Khatouni,“ she said, “and this is my husband Wisran Sutan Alisjahbana and my wife Angela Byrum.”

“Hi,” Julia said to Farinaz’s husband and wife.

“Are you from here?” he asked.

“Oh, me and Wisran, yes. Angela is a Gamma girl.”

“Ah,” Julian replied not sure what that meant. At that moment, the call of a muezzin could be heard.

“Isn’t it time for your prayer?” Julian asked uncertainly.”

“Oh no,” Wisran said. “We’re not religious. We’re celebrating Ramadan or Mawlid but only out of tradition, you know like Christmas for Christians.”

“Then you’re also not taking part of the Hajj?” Julian asked.

“What’s the Hajj?” Wisran asked.

“I think it’s an old Earth tradition,” Farinaz said.

Julian then remembered that they were not on Earth and that, according to the Doctor, experiencing an Ice Age and wasn’t comfortable.

“Where do you come from?” Angela asked.

“Oh…” Julian said. “I’m not from around here…actually I’m not even from this time.”

Farinaz’s eyes widened in excitement:

“You’re a Time Agent?” she said.

“Not, no agent…freelancer.” Julian said.

He finished his meal and said goodbye to the couple.

“Found someone to talk to as well?” Thuỷ said as they joined the Doctor to make their way further through the city.

“I did: a Muslim couple. It seems that religion as a whole changed quite somewhat. Who did you talk to?”

“Franklin and Lauren Thane. They came all the way from Boshane Peninsula, wherever that is, along with their cute two-year old son Javic.”

Julian nodded as they left the crowded market place to find themselves on a small square in the centre of which a small fountain stood along with the statue of a man. He looked proudly ahead as if he looked forward into a glorious future.

“Who is that?” Thuỷ wondered.

“Captain Richard Harcourt,” a voice behind them said. The three time travellers looked at a young man who strode towards them extending his hand to greet them.

“Professor Isaiah Eshel,” the man introduced himself. The others did the same. Professor Eshel turned back to the statue of Captain Harcourt.

“Leader of the failed resistance of 4037; the military leader of the Imperial Army, General Xi Dajun, executed him personally. When the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire eventually fell in 4495 and the instable New Protectorate took its place, Xi became governor of Zaruthstra two years later.”

“Xi…” murmured Julian.

“He was the descendant of one of Earths most famous leaders in the old days,” Professor Eshel explained. “And he ruled until the independence in 4711.”

They had reached the other gate by now from which you could see the wide landscape and also, just barely visible on the horizon, the ruins of a once literally tall city.

“The ruins of Avalon, the old capital,” Eshel said. “Ruled by the rich and beautiful, at the expense of everyone else and the natives. Along with the Ood, the Zaruthstrans were made slaves to the ruling power which was the spark that ignited the revolution. Up until then, the human settlers had enjoyed a rather friendly relationship with the natives.”

“What are the Zaruthstrans like? Thuỷ asked.

“Over there you can see two of them,” Professor Eshel said pointing to a species of small humanoid the size of a ten-year-old child with yellow skin.

“There’re amphibian hermaphrodites. They live in matriarchal communities by the lakes and rivers. Many of them joined our revolution and from them, a lot of combatants did not return. Gankhuyagiin Oyun, the first president and founder of this new capital, made history when she appointed half of her cabinet with Zaruthstran members in a coalition with their party. Her successors have followed that strategy.”

Just then they noted that the Doctor had left and was talking to another alien species. As they reached the Time Lord, he turned away from the alien which had tentacles instead of a mouth and was holding a large orb in his hand that was connected to his body somewhere.

“What was that?” Thuỷ.

“An Ood, it’s called an Ood,” said the Doctor somewhat absentmindedly.

“What is it, Doctor?” Julian asked.

He looked at the two companions.

“Someone is expecting us…at Villengard.”

The Doctor turned to the professor.

“I’m sorry, professor, but we have to leave. Someone wishes to see us.”

“At Villengard, I hear,” Eshel said. “You won’t find any weapons anymore, though. The factories have been destroyed and…”

“…replaced with a banana grove, yes, I know,” said the Doctor proudly. “I planted them.”

Leaving the professor to stand there open-mouthed, the Doctor strode off. After a brief smile, Julian and Thuỷ followed him.

* * *

A short while later, the TARDIS landed again and the Doctor opened the doors.

“Behold…Villengard!”

Julian and Thuỷ got out of the time machine in awe as they looked around surrounded by banana plants. The sky was blue and it smelled beautifully. As the Doctor closed the doors to the TARDIS, Julian looked towards the large magnificent fountain in the centre of the grove and that’s when he spotted her! Sitting by the fountain with her short blond hair and hazel-coloured eyes, her blue trench-coat and the dark blue, almost black T-shirt with rainbow stripes on her chest and blue trousers. The woman he had seen several times throughout his life. And now, as he was seeing her, it dawned on Julian who she was, who she had to be!

“You!” he whispered as she stood up and waved at him. Almost as in a trance, he moved towards her until they were standing mere inches apart.

“Julian,” she said smiling at him as if meeting a long lost friend.

“…Doctor!” he said. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Hello again…Hi Thuỷ!”

“…Hi…” Thuỷ said stunned remembering her standing in front of the AAI the week before their lives had changed forever. Now their Doctor was catching up staring in disbelief at his future self.

“No…” he murmured surprised and a little afraid it seemed. “No, this is not possible…”

“So that’s what it looks like,” observed the blond Doctor, “A special effect indeed…chinny.”

“Says you…shortie.” He retorted.

“Oi!”

“OI!”

Julian and Thuỷ looked at each other.

The Doctor in tweed jacket and bowtie was now pacing around his future self.

“How can that be? I’m the last…there’s no one who could…or is there?”

She smiled at him, understandingly and sad.

“There is. It’s still out there…and you will save it…all of you…well, except me. Bummer really, I’d totally loved to go, but, you know…surprises.”

She shrugged.

“So you…” Julian slowly stepped towards her again. “You really did fulfil your promise.”

“Partly,” she admitted. “From my point of view I’m not finished yet. Just returned from your third birthday; gave you the toy waste collection vehicle.”

“That was you?” Julian said.

“I think we’ll better leave you two alone,” Thuỷ said. “Come on, Doctor,” she said to their Doctor, “Show me your banana grove.”

“Yeah…right,” the bowtie-Doctor said as Thuỷ took his arm and the two of them went along.

“It’s been so long ago since I last saw you...the grown-up you.” The Doctor said as she and Julian said down by the fountain. “So many adventures…where are you coming from now?”

“Zaruthstra,” he said.

“Ah,” she said. “so much still ahead then.”

“Don’t spoil me!” he ordered sharply.

“Oh no,” she said, “first rule of my wife.”

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“A bit unbalanced, isn’t it? I know so much about you. I remember when I first saw you…”

“With the woman in red,” Julian said. She looked at him for a moment before remembering.

“Oh yes…Martha…Martha Jones. She loved you too. You were very chatty. I enjoyed talking with you,”

“When I was a baby?” Julian said.

“I speak baby,” the Doctor defended herself.

“Naturally. What did I say, then?”

“Well,” she said thinking back. “You were very interested in the sonic…you loved being held by Martha…even when you were disappointed that she didn’t give any milk…you like to sing. Did you know that babies think laughter is singing?”

Julian shook his head.

“Thanks for looking after me,” he said.

“Well, I like to be a good godfather…godmother,” she corrected herself.

He looked at her before placing his head on her shoulder. Together they stared out onto the banana grove.

“What did the Doctor mean by it wasn’t possible?” Julian said.

“A Time Lord can regenerate when they die,” the Doctor explained. “But only thirteen times. The one you travel with…it’s his last incarnation. But sometimes, the Time Lords can grant them a new cycle of regenerations. They did so with me…and an old friend of mine. But don’t tell him though…please.”

“Of course not…is it hard though…not finding out your own future when you could.”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “And he will forget meeting me because the timelines are out of sync.”

“Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey,” Julian quoted the Doctor and she grinned.

“I wish I could stay with you longer though…I’ve seen you… _you_ …so many times and I feel that we’ve connected somehow.”

“Don’t worry,” said the Doctor, “whoever I am…you will always be safe with me. I promise you that!” She stroked his cheek.

“And you’ll meet me again. Well, me and…other mes.”

They stayed there for quite a while cuddling together enjoying the sun as it shone down on them. When they opened their eyes again, they saw Thuỷ and the Doctor on the emerging from the fields in the distance. As Julian stood up he embraced the Doctor once again. He felt so secure in being with her. She was oozing kindness, joy and care and an excitement for adventure.

“Travel hopefully,” she whispered in his ear. “The universe will always surprise you…constantly.”


	6. Stupor Mundi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and his two companions travel to the 13th century to meet Emperor Frederick II, a man raised surrounded by the Greek, the Sicilian, the Arabian and the German culture. Now, Julian and Thuỷ can get a glimpse of the life he was living...

He could have never guessed how vast the library truly was! All the universities on Earth couldn’t fill these halls. Julian wandered through all those shelves with books from all over the universe…

Slips of wood and bamboo, _jiǎndú_ , from the time of the great philosophers with different versions of classical works like the _Dàodéjīng_ or the _Mòzǐ_ ; complete copies of the Sumerian _Instructions of Shuruppak_ , one of the earliest pieces of literature in human history; books from the early 20th century such as _Summer Falls_ by Amelia Williams; but also books in Julian’s and Thuỷ’s future such as the _Book of Celebrants_ , _Our Numbers_ , the first book written completely by a sentient AI, a fictional work with a message of trust and cooperation between AI and organic beings; _The Children of Davros, a Short History of the Dalek Race_ by Njeri Ngugi in 4065; there was also a book called _The History of the Time War_. But Julian was looking for something else. Eventually he found a record of the large Human Empires: there were four of them: the First Great and Bountiful Human Empire lasted from 2491 to 2983, the second one from 3245 to 4495, the third one from 7704 to 7868 and the fourth one from 198,680 to 199,909. He also found information on Xi Dajun or **習大君** as his name was being written in Chinese: born in 2859, right during the time of the First Great Empire, he lived with his incredibly large family of rich people on Earth before it became too uncomfortable at which point his family spread to several colonised worlds. Xi eventually joined the military and led the Battle of Zaruthstra in 4037. He returned to that world as a governor when the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire collapsed in 4495 and was killed by Gankhuyagiin Oyun herself during the revolution in 4711. He had lived 1852 years!

It took Julian a while to find Thuỷ. This ship was simply too big! He found her eventually in the garden where all kinds of terrestrial and alien plants grew side by side in different environments, hot, cold, comfortable; she was reading a book herself here, on the person they were about to meet.

“Hi there,” Julian said walking slowly up to her with his hands in his pockets.

“Hey, you,” she responded standing up to give him a kiss.

Julian sat down beside her.

“Are you excited?” he asked her.

“I’m curious,” Thuỷ said. “Did you learn about Frederick II during your history course?”

“We studied his grandfather, Frederick Barbarossa,” Julian replied.

“You know,” said Thuỷ, “it’s interesting that the Holy Roman Empire didn’t have a capital and no firm residence. They constantly moved from _Kaiserpfalz_ to _Kaiserpfalz_ , as the Royal Palaces were called.”

“Perhaps one reason why we have such a federal culture in Germany,” Julian mused. “We never had a London or Paris, a central government – well, apart from 1933 to 1945, of course…even the German Empire of the 19th century was a federal state. I look forward to that…it’s when my great-great-grandfather lived, the first member of our family to be a politician.”

Julian looked at Thuỷ.

“Don’t you want to explore your family’s history?”

“I’m not sure…I mean, I’ve thought about it…but I think some things should not be explored, even if you travel in a time machine. But it’s not like I’m uninterested! I’m very interested in Vietnam’s history. And there is one person that I want to meet. I want to know what he was like…even though I don’t share his political views at all!”

Julian nodded.

“I have a hunch of whom you’re talking about.”

Thuỷ stood up.

“Let’s go and see the Doctor, shall we?”

* * *

The Time Lord sat underneath the console area repairing some giant wire-like things as Julian and Thuỷ approached him, already dressed for the occasion.

“You know what?” he said finishing his work and putting away his googles.

“I thought I’d show you how to control the TARDIS.”

Julian and Thuỷ looked at each other.

“Seeing as it’s meant to be steered by six people, half of them is already quite stabilising.”

He ran up to the console and the two humans followed him.

“All right, Thuỷ, keep holding that, and when I say so, keep rotating it like this.”

He ran up to another section.

“Julian, keep that steady, we don’t want to end up in Zhongdu, a large battle there this year, trust me, I’ve been there!”

Julian grinned as the Doctor positioned himself at the lever and typed in the coordinates.

“Okay…August 15, 1215: a Saturday! Love Saturdays, a big temporal tipping point when everything is possible.”

He laughed as he pulled the lever. With Julian and Thuỷ helping at the controls, the Doctor didn’t have as much to do although he did go around the console one time. And then…they landed.

The Doctor opened the door and peaked outside.

“Hello again…” he murmured.

They had landed in a splendidly crafted corridor. The walls were painted showing landscapes and religious scenes.

“It’s so colourful!” Thuỷ said.

“Yeah! All those scenes of castles in films are totally wrong. The owners of castles would be disgusted to see their homes portrayed so bleakly. Come on, it’s right through here.”

They headed for a set of double doors which were open to show a large hall with long tables where men and women were sitting. Julian noted that the men were not only Europeans but also Arabs. Next to a fireplace stood a young man of about 21 years old dressed in red robes with golden patterns, a cup of wine in his hand. He had shoulder-long brown hair and a thin beard which encircled his lips and extended to his cheeks. As he looked up to see the newcomers, his mouth widened to a bright smile.

“Doctor! So long it’s been!”

“Hello, Freddie,” the doctor said and to Julian’s and the other attendees big surprise, the two embraced each other like brothers.

“You’ve changed again,” observed Frederick. “Do say, where is Lady Donna?”

The Doctor’s face turned sad for just a moment but he restrained himself quickly.

“She, er, she’s home, yeah…happily married.”

“Ah…” Frederick said having just spotted Julian and Thuỷ. Thuỷ’s eyes narrowed a bit as the young Roman-German king gazed at her body.

“Oh yes,” the Doctor said, “These are Julian and Thuỷ.”

Frederick took a step forward and kissed Thuỷ’s hand. Then he extended his left arm and began to sing:

_Meravigliosamente_

_un amor mi distringe_

_e soven ad ogn'ora._

_Com'omo che ten mente_

_in altro exemplo pinge_

_la simile pintura,_

_così, bella, facc'eo_

_che 'nfra lo core meo_

_porto la tua figura._

Applause filled the hall as Frederick bowed before her and his audience. Thuỷ stood there baffled and shocked. She looked to Julian who could only make a confused face and shrug.

“Come, my friends, please, do sit beside me.” Frederick said invitingly and the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ followed the king who sat next to a young beautiful small lady with a small nose and an angel-shaped face.

“This is Lady Chiara Ansalda,” Frederick introduced her. Julian was taken aback for a moment. He was sure he had seen her before but he couldn’t say where…

“And now: Mr. Walther von der Vogelweide!” Frederick announced loudly and the whole room exploded with applause as if they would welcome a rock star! A man in blue robes stood up and went up to a chair that stood in the empty space.

“Oh my god,” Julian whispered to Thuỷ, “He is the most famous German poet before Goethe!”

Walther von der Vogelweide began to sing in Middle High German:

_Ich saz ûf eime steine,_

_und dahte bein mit beine;_

_dar ûf satzt ich den ellenbogen;_

_ich hete mir in mîne hant gesmogen_

_daz kinne und ein mîn wange._

_dô dahte ich mir vil ange,_

_wie man zer werlte sollte leben;_

The poet rested his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand in a pensive position.

_Die wollte ich gerne in einen schrîn._

_jâ leider desn mac niht gesîn,_

_daz guot und werltlich êre_

_und gotes hulde mêre_

_zesamene in ein herze komen._

He closed his last words by rising from his chair and extending his arms then bowing before the audience. Other less known poets (at least, to Julian and Thuỷ) were also performing before the king and Lady Chiara departed for the king’s bedchamber.

“Wasn’t he married…I mean, isn’t he married?” Thuỷ wondered. Julian nodded.

“He was known for having Affairs," Julian explained. "He had at least 20 children and those are only those we know of. But some information on that is likely to come from church propaganda in an effort to depict him as a debauchee.”

“Well, anyhow, I wouldn’t want to go to bed with someone who stinks so much!” Thuỷ made clear. “I mean, the pre-historic humans we met knew how to wash themselves, so did the Neanderthals!”

The two of them watched the closed door through which Frederick and Lady Chiara had vanished.

“So, what do we do now?” Julian asked the Doctor who returned from his chat with Walther von der Vogelweide.

“Well…hadn’t thought that he would…lie down so quickly…” the Time Lord muttered scratching his head. “I must have been out of my estimate, I thought this poet challenge would have lasted longer. Loved it in Palermo, all those Sicilian poets launching a new era of Italian literature, aw, love Italian literature. Did I ever tell you about my time with Boccaccio?”

Julian shook his head in amusement.

“That’s why we’ve only landed now in this time, instead of his time in Palermo?” Thuỷ deduced.

The Doctor clapped his hands together.

“Righty-o! Let’s go to a little ceremony, shall we?” he said striding through the corridor towards the TARDIS. The other two followed. Julian wondered as to why the Doctor had avoided Thuỷ’s question. Was it something about that lady Frederick mentioned to accompany the Time Lord?

They helped him steer the TARDIS again and opened the door to find themselves in the capital of Christianity itself: Rome!

“Five years later, this is where Frederick will be crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire,” the Doctor explained.

“But…” Thuỷ looked around. “Shouldn’t we be at St. Peter’s?”

“We are!” the Doctor said. “This is St. Peter’s Church; the cathedral will be built later, in the 16th century. Come on.”

They made their way to the interior.

Important people from all over the Holy Roman Empire had made their way to this place to witness the ceremony. King Frederick and his wife Constance of Aragon were kneeling before Pope Honorius III as he held the crown over the king’s head.

“Receive now the symbol of glory! In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit. Amen!”

“Amen!” it echoed through the room by the attendees.

“That was neat…” commented Julian sarcastically, a little unimpressed.

“Well, it’s not queen Elizabeth II, isn’t it?” the Doctor whispered back. “That was a spectacle!”

The trio was the last to congratulate the new emperor and Frederick asked the Doctor and his friends to accompany him for a while when the pope approached him.

“Frederick,” he said, “It is time to free Jerusalem from the hands of the infidel!”

Frederick stopped looking ahead with his back to the pope.

“I will go…as soon as the matters of the empire have been settled.”

“I and the church have fulfilled our part,” Honorius pressed, “now it is up to you to fulfil yours.”

Frederick looked over his shoulder for a second before making his way towards the exit.

“I shall let you know my decision in due time.”

The Doctor and his companions followed the emperor.

* * *

“I’ve delayed the crusade three times by now,” Frederick said as they sat in the gardens of his palace at Palermo. The Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ had travelled eight years into the future, into 1228. Frederick had used the time to set the affairs of his Italian home in order and spent his free time with studying hawks. He shared the fascination for these birds with his Arab advisors.

“Pope Honorius died a year ago,” Frederick told his time-travelling friends. “His successor, Gregory IX has excommunicated me because I’ve not yet sailed for the Holy Land. He expects a bloody conquest. But can’t there be a way to solve this without sacrificing lives?” The young emperor stared into the distance.

“I’ve known the Muslim culture all my life…Now I am expected to fight them…have you ever fought, Doctor?” he suddenly asked. Now it was the Doctor himself who stared ahead, his face sunken and his hands rubbing together.

“Once I fought…the only time. Not for religion or race…for the sake of all creation. The Last Great Time War! That’s what it was called. My people fought a race called the Daleks. And I ended it all! With a single Moment I wiped them from existence, Daleks and Time Lords alike. It was the only way…I am the last of my people, Frederick. That was the time when I wasn’t the Doctor…I was something which I never wanted to be! And it took me all.”

He looked at the young emperor and Julian had the weird sensation that is was a much wiser and older man sitting there with his bowtie and boyish face, a face which he normally didn’t show. Frederick stood up.

“I will not let it come that far. I intend to acquire the Holy City with words, not with a fight. I know that they do not wish to fight as much as I don’t. Await me at Acre, Doctor. I value you as my advisor.”

The Doctor stood likewise with a glimmer or adventure in his eyes.

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said and stretched out his hand. Frederick took it and patted him on the shoulder.

As they headed for the TARDIS, Thuỷ asked the Doctor:

“So you’ve been in a crusade before?”

“Oh yeah, the third one. Didn’t meet Salah ad-Din, unfortunately. Well, perhaps one day.”

* * *

When they stepped out of the TARDIS again, they found themselves at the coast of Palestine. A fleet of ships had just arrived and Frederick was just getting of one of the boats that had headed for the shore.

“Finally,” they heard him say to one of his advisors. “Hamid, we’ve made it! What could be better for a Christian than to set foot on the Holy Land?”

“By the will of Allah, we are here. But it is our Holy Land as well,” said Hamid.

“Doctor!” the emperor said having just spotted them as they approached. He approached him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Lovely to see you, Freddie,” said the Doctor. “So…how do you want to reclaim Jerusalem?”

“I have a plan.” The emperor answered.

“Oh, great, usually it’s me who says that,” the Doctor replied with a smirk.

“I’ve made contact with Muslim leaders,” explained Frederick, “Let us hope that we can negotiate a victory without bloodshed.”

* * *

It seemed however that the Muslims didn’t agree with the Holy Roman Emperor.

“Looks like they’re denying you entry, your majesty,” Julian remarked.

“Look!” Thuỷ pointed towards the sky were a single arrow flew at the crusaders and landed between the horses of the emperor and the Doctor. Frederick picked up the message that was attached to it.

“It’s a message from the sultan: he changed his mind and doesn’t want to negotiate any longer.”

“Well, that complicates matters,” Thuỷ commented dryly.

With 800 knights and 3000 foot soldiers under his command, Frederick, his advisors and the TARDIS companions rode to the fortress of the Teutonic Order whose support he would need. As they dismounted, an elderly man in armour came running towards him.

“That’s Hermann von Salza,” explained the Doctor to Julian and Thuỷ, “the head of the Teutonic Order.”

“Your majesty,” von Salza greeted Frederick, “The Teutonic Order will support you but the members of the Knights Templar and the Order of Saint John are men of the pope. I fear you will have to coerce them to support you.”

Frederick sighed.

“I can’t coerce them. I will have to persuade them to join.”

Von Salza bowed and led the way into the fortress where, deep down, in a barely lit hall, the heads of the two other orders had already gathered at a round table. Emperor Frederick and von Salza joined them while the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ remained next to Hamid, the Muslim advisor to the emperor.

“You owe your allegiance to the Pope,” said the head of the Order of Saint John, “You should’ve never come to the Holy Land!”

“I don’t need the Pope’s blessing!” declared Frederick, “I am here in the name of God and Christianity.”

“Only His Holiness is the vicar of God.” The head of the Teutonic Order retorted.

In the back Thuỷ rolled her eyes.

“Can’t they just get along?”

“I’d rather hope they don’t,” Julian whispered back, “Otherwise, it _will_ be a bloodbath.”

“He may be the vicar of God,” Frederick said, “yet you still owe me your allegiance! Do you want to free Jerusalem from the hands of the infidel or don’t you?”

Hermann von Salza came to his aid:

“Do you honestly believe the Pope will send another military leader or another Emperor even? If you won’t give us your support, we will find another way.”

Receiving only glares from the other two leaders, Frederick and von Salza stormed off joined by the time travellers and Hamid who remarked:

“The Sultan will know that you don’t have their support, majesty.”

* * *

On the battlements, Frederick turned to his Muslim friend:

“Hamid, my friend, I need you to do something for me. You must talk to the Sultan!”

Hamid nodded.

“He won’t shy away from war. However he doesn’t yearn for it either.”

Frederick looked down.

“What should I do?”

“You will have to make concessions to him.”

The Holy Roman Emperor remained silent for a moment.

“Let the Sultan know that there doesn’t have to be bloodshed. _ʾIn shāʾa llāh_ , my friend, if God wills it.”

“ _ʾIn shāʾa llāh_ ,” said Hamid before leaving.

* * *

It took some time before they received news. Sultan Al-Kamil Muhammad al-Malik hesitated apparently, for quite some time. In the end, however, he was willing to start negotiations. The crusaders set up camp before the gates of Jaffa. Between the camp and the city, a tent had been set up.

Julian was surprised to hear that the Knights Templar and the Order of Saint John would join the army. Perhaps they wanted to see Frederick’s attempts to negotiate hoping perhaps that he would fail. He briefly wondered whether this had been the reason for them to refuse allegiance: to confirm their worldview that the only way to face Muslims was to fight them. There was something very familiar about this worldview…

It was all the more enjoyable to watch Frederick and the Sultan playing chess while chatting about natural sciences and family.

“What is he doing?” gasped the head of the Knights Templar. “What weapons is that man fighting with?”

“Diplomacy,” the Doctor remarked. “That’s standard Muslim negotiation tactic: sending high-ranking envoys, exchanging high-ranking gifts and chatting about this and that. The thing is to not break off the conversation.”

Under the tent meanwhile, Frederick was making his move.

“Jaffa, Bethlehem and the whole of Jerusalem for Christianity.”

“But the Temple Mount,” Al-Kamil responded. “The Mosque? Free entry for Muslims?”

The Emperor nodded.

“Free entry for Muslims, Jews _and_ Christians.”

Al-Kamil moved his bishop before responding.

“And the prisoners?”

“We’re exchanging them,” Frederick replied. “Furthermore, ten years of armistice.”

“No,” the Sultan said. “No. Ten years, five months and forty days as demanded by the Muslim calendar.”

Frederick smiled and shrugged.

“Well… stalemate, my friend.”

Both men knocked their kings down. Then they shook hands and placed them on their chests.

“Your pope won’t like this,” Al-Kamil mused with a knowing smile.

Frederick, smiling as well, remarked: “The pilgrims will like it. As will Christianity.”

As the Holy Roman Emperor and the Sultan got onto their feet, the crusaders looked anxiously waiting for Frederick’s next words.

“You have come here to pray at the tomb of the Christ for your salvation. Go, then…JERUSALEM IS OURS!”

And the emperor raised his fist and the crowd cheered. Julian closed his eyes and smiled in relief. “Whoo!” said Thuỷ and Frederick smiled at her.

“If only all conflicts were resolved so amazingly as this one,” commented the Doctor and put his hand on Frederick’s shoulder.

“I have seen you do it several times, Doctor,” said Frederick. “I will pray for your success, my friend.”

* * *

Back in the TARDIS, Julian found Thuỷ in the library sitting next to a table displaying several religious texts, among them the Tanakh, the Quran and the Bible. He sat next to her gazing at the three tests.

“All this fighting that still goes on today…” Thuỷ mourned shaking her head. “I mean, don’t they believe in the same god?”

Julian sighed and shrugged.

“Perhaps he’s angry because they no longer worship his wife,” he said pointing to a set of female figurines highlighting the breasts and an inscription on a piece of stone in old Hebrew script which dissolved into English before their eyes:

_Yahweh and his Asherah_

“All this dogma and rage against 'blasphemy' when there is clear evidence that even religions change and become different,” Julian said. “God did have a wife…which of course the old men in charge didn’t like.”

“Perhaps it’s her who’s angry,” Thuỷ mused with a sly smile before being serious again. “But I wonder whether this religious antagonism will ever stop…”

Just then they felt the thud the TARDIS made when it landed.

“Come on,” Julian said, “Let’s see where and when we are.”

When they arrived, the Doctor had already opened the TARDIS doors letting it bright sunshine. And as they stepped out, Julian and Thuỷ on a pavement inside a futuristic city with incredibly high buildings. Self-driving cars were moving about and in the sky some were even flying above them! But it was the people that really caught their attention. A diverse, colourful maze of humans _and_ machines moved about, some humanoid, others not. And not few people walked around wearing absolutely nothing or very little showing off their breasts and genitals as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

“Welcome,” said the Doctor, “to New Shanghai!”


	7. After the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding themselves in the year 5,000,000,012 on New Earth, Julian and Thuỷ experience their most exotic and alien visit yet where nothing seems strange or abnormal anymore...

Julian and Thuỷ stared in awe at the scene before them: a colourful mix of styles; some, while still clothed, seemed to proudly show off their breasts and genitals, men and women alike but also men with breasts and women with penises. It seemed that there were no borders anymore, everyone could wear anything!

And then there were people with no clothing at all, adults, teens and children alike! Some of the nude people had their bodies painted in alluring patterns, others wore not clothing but what seemed to be jewellery made of plants and pearls.

It took Julian a while to stop staring at the myriad of fashion styles and to look around: the city as well seemed to have been put together by a variety of individual taste, a mix of architecture from all points in time: traditional Chinese houses and 21st-century skyscrapers to styles that Julian couldn’t yet know.

“When are we? Is this Earth?” Thuỷ wondered.

“It’s New Earth,” said the Doctor who had watched his companions with a smile the whole time.

“Your world was destroyed by the expanding sun about a decade ago. What a moment, I nearly missed it! Now humans have found themselves a new home, here in the M87 galaxy. And right now, it’s the year 5,000,000,012!”

Thuỷ’s eyes widened in shock:

“Come again?”

“Five billion years in your future,” the Doctor said.

“Look how carefree everyone is!” Julian noted.

“Oh, this is nothing,” commented the Doctor, “you should see New Paris, now _that_ is something!”

“Seriously: five billion years?!” Thuỷ almost shrieked in excitement and, puzzling to Julian, utter amazement.

“Five billion years!” the Doctor exclaimed and the two of them laughed with radiant faces.

“Oh, man, it never ceases to amaze me,” Thuỷ sighed as they walked along the pavement amongst all those colourful and skin-showing people. A group of young boys and girls ranging from 5 to 10 years old were chasing each other around playfully and laughing with delight and, aside from some of them wearing nappies, were totally naked. And just next to them, a man and a woman were having casual sex, right out there for everyone to see; yet no one seemed to give them much notice. It was like an all-daily activity in the city.

“How is this world structured?” Julian asked the Doctor as he made a few pictures with his modified smartphone. “Clearly, you’ve been here before.”

“Three times,” the Doctor said; “Once in New Paris and two times in New New York. New Earth is comprised of several dozen communities, some no larger than a small village. But they’re all oozing with nostalgia; after Earth was destroyed there was a big revival movement, many places are an idealistic representation of their original role models. But there have also been entirely new movements and social structures. You can find anything here: conservative, progressive, theocratic, humanistic, centralised, anarchistic, primitivistic…”

They watched as a swarm of tiny AIs came flying around the corner briefly circling around a tree before moving on. A couple passed them, a human male with an android-looking being.

“The only rule for the whole planet is to not enforce your believe on other communities,” the Doctor finished.

Thuỷ, who had been wandering ahead of Julian and the Doctor, now stood in front of a small building with the inscription

**安逸咖啡館**

She beamed over to Julian and took his hand.

“What do you say?” she asked him.

He nodded and smiled.

“It’s a date.”

As they held hands and prepared to go, the Doctor got hold of Julian’s arm.

“Here, take this,” he said giving them something like an ultra-thin USB drive. “In New Shanghai, you still pay with money. It’s a payment chip.”

Julian put the chip in his pocket and together with Thuỷ entered the _Comforting Café_. Inside, they found some places to be occupied by both humans and AI. Julian briefly wondered why as surely androids and robots wouldn’t need nourishment. But perhaps it was some kind of artificial food and drink so that they could at least pretend to eat with their partners. As they got in line, Julian took out his smartphone to take pictures of the interior. He wondered what time travel story would be more unbelievable to people of his time: that in the ancient past, humans had been living peacefully and anarchistic without money or laws or that they would live this openly as they did here although it apparently took them a few billion years to get through this.

“Do you think this is the strangest place the Doctor will take us to?” he whispered to Thuỷ.

“Well, I certainly hope not,” she said, “I’m up for way more unimaginable things. That’s why I joined this ride.”

She smiled at him.

“That’s why I chose the future. What’s the fun about travelling to a place you already know stuff about?”

“Well,” Julian countered, “first, we don’t know how it really came to be, all we have are bits of artefacts and written tales, some of which were written long after the event. And secondly, no historical account is objective. You’ll always have an opinion when writing about events or people. That’s what makes it such an excellent opportunity for propaganda, I would say. And then there are peoples who don’t have written language, from pre-history or other cultures who rely on oral history. Now we can see how they lived, what happened first hand…with our own eyes and make our own judgement.”

Thuỷ nodded smiling.

“I still prefer exploring the fully unknown. See whether humanity will become better in time…”

As they stepped up in the queue, they noticed that the customer in front of them was a very young boy, probably about four to five years old, who first climbed a specially designed podium in order to be able to see beyond the counter to order a glass of water. Next, it was Julian’s and Thuỷ’s turn.

“Hi there,” said the woman behind the counter aid cheerfully, “Welcome to the Comforting Café! I’m Kayla, how may I help you?”

Thuỷ looked at the menu.

“We’d like a couple of Tangyuan along with two cups of coffee with milk, please.”

“Sure,” Kayla said as next to her, out of nowhere, another young woman appeared much to Julian’s and Thuỷ’s surprise.

“Hiiiiiiii,” she said in a singing tone, “I’m Irela, how are you?”

“Um…” Julian said while Thuỷ just stared at her with wide exciting eyes. “We’re good…thanks”

“Irela’s my girlfriend,” explained Kayla as she and Irela prepared the order. “She’s a hologram.”

“Uh, yeah…we thought so,” Thuỷ stammered with a quick smile fearing she might have been staring too much.

“You’re not from here, then?” Irela asked continuing to smile a Thuỷ looking up and down her body.

“No, um, we’re from, uh, New New York.”

“Oh, really? You came all this way?” Kayla asked in an enthusing tone. “Now, what kind of milk do you want?” She pointed her colourfully painted arm to the screen on the menu which briefly switched to show a few variations.

“Cow’s milk, goat’s milk, human milk, Skarasen milk, Queen-bat milk…”

“Uh, cow’s milk,” Julian said quickly while Thuỷ asked: “Human milk?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Kayla pointing to a corner where a couple of women and even some men with breasts said and were either spraying milk in cups or bottles or letting people drink from them directly.

“If you like, we also have other body fluids.”

“Thanks, but we’ll pass,” Julian replied handing her the chip. Kayla took it and inserted it into the counter.

“That’s 16 Myn and 70 Nak,” she said returning the chip to them while Irela presented them with their food and drink. Julian who held the tray and Thuỷ sat down at one of the nearest tables next to a man and a woman who had a vampire-like look; truly, whoever did the surgery did an amazing job!

“Never thought humans would still be around this far into the future,” Julian mused as they helped themselves to some Tangyuan.

“Yeah, and they still look incredibly human – I mean apart from all those surgical alterations,” Thuỷ looked around spotting two male teenagers who sat in a corner on a bench, naked, and were engaged in passionate foreplay before starting to masturbate each other. Apart from Julian and Thuỷ no one seemed to take much note of that.

“…and the unbelievable sexual openness,” Thuỷ added.

“After seeing what we’ve seen,” Julian contemplated, “I doubt we can ever live in our time like we did before…knowing what lies ahead…and what came before. If we ever live much in our time again anyway; watching all those people on the news or on social media fighting for a better future that will never come in their lifetime…”

Thuỷ stared ahead for a moment.

“I wish I could make Slam-Poetry about this…well I could but nobody would believe me…”

“Why not?” said Julian with a smirk, “would be something new, wouldn’t it? …'Society will change but not for a billion years!' …Yeah, that would truly be funny, eh? I guess I was wrong about fundamental changes: they just occurred much later.”

“Do you still want to study and have a job after our experience?” Thuỷ asked pensively. “I mean, knowing that things won’t become better?”

Julian sipped his cup of coffee for a moment before replying.

“I don’t know…kinda makes you wonder though whether you can truly change time…whatever we decide, especially after having travelled through time and space…will it be fixed? And if not, if something changes…does this mean that all the adventures we had so far in the future never happened…never will…happen…or whatever?”

The two looked at each other for a while as if they were having a staring contest asking themselves that question, brain-storming…

After having finished, Julian and Thuỷ left the café and spotted the Doctor chatting with a young man with a short beard and long dark brown hair which he had braided into two braids. They were standing under a giant advertising board showing commercial of a project known as the Testimony Foundation. Julian and Thuỷ crossed the street and joined the Doctor.

“Ah, there you are,” the Time Lord said, “I’ve just been talking to this fellow chap here: Bol Mukhjeree.Σ34; he’s part of an archaeological expedition a bit outside the city.”

“An expedition?” said Thuỷ with fire in her eyes.

“What are we looking for?” asked Julian.

“We’re exploring the possibly oldest entity on this world…” Bol replied. “Your friend, the Doctor, tells me he has a good dose of experience with artificial intelligence.”

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world…or the universe, in fact,” the Doctor smiled.

Bol moved a finger and a moment later a flying car landed right beside them.

“ _I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever move your ass,_ ” the car greeted Bol and, if Julian’s ears didn’t deceive him, not only did the car speak but its voice was cheerful and slightly sarcastic.

“This is Dongfeng,” said Bol as he approached the car. The inside looked extremely comfortable, almost like a very small five-star Hotel room. As soon as they were all sitting, the car took off, rising into the air until they couldn’t even see the people on the street anymore.

The expedition site had been set up on a pain of blue grass near a mountain range with weird, incredible rock formations in golden colours. After Dongfeng had landed and set off again, Bol led the Doctor and his companions to one of the tents where he introduced them to his fellow team members:

“This is 12A05F07F, a member of the _Yìhn-gau-jé_ , a species of networked AI, built in 23,004,078, that’s 4,976,995,934 years ago,” Bol said. “12A here is the second leader of the team.”

“This hardware however was constructed only 397 years ago,” explained the silver-coloured AI in a monotone, somewhat lifeless voice which still sounded like it wasn’t just repeating pre-scripted Alexa-like sentences though. It looked somewhat humanoid expect for the head which was cone-shaped and had only one camera-like red-glowing light on its head.

Bol gestured to a woman who certainly looked human though a little too perfect.

“This is Ene, she’s been studying AI and androids her entire life…well, not really surprising considering she herself is one.”

Bol turned around looking for someone.

“Right, where’s…? Jak? Jak! Ah, there he is!”

He waved at a man who was approaching alongside a woman who held a newborn baby in her arms.

“Hi guys,” the man said. “Jak Rais; head linguist. This is my wife: Kwatién:se Horn”

“Is that Krisi?” Bol asked looking at the baby.

“Yeah, she’s cute, isn’t she?” Kwatién:se cooed. “You had just flown off to the city when his contractions started.”

“You’ve…been pregnant?” Thuỷ asked with a voice as if nothing would surprise her anymore.

“Oh yeah…” said Jak, “We talked about how much we would share, you know, who carries her, who nurses her. I offered to do all, you know, but she said it wouldn’t be fair, you know…”

“Of course it wouldn’t be; we’re both her parents!” Kwatién:se said. “Imagine if she had five parents like you did, Jak, I really don’t know how _they_ shared it all…”

“Anyway…” Bol said going to the next member, a tiny little man with skin as red as a tomato.

“Oh, you’re a Zucci!” the Doctor called out in amazement and shook the man’s hand.

“Never thought I’d be seeing one of you again, last time was on the Titanic, now that was a ride…What’s your name, sir?”

“Zoyyotolomosko,” the Zucci replied.

“Aw, Zoyyotolomosko, what a lovely name!” the Doctor smiled like a little schoolboy.

“And finally,” Bol said putting his hands on the shoulders of a female-looking being with weird skin like bark of a tree, “we have Crann, one of the Forest of Cheem.”

“Hello Doctor,” said Crann extending her hand towards his.

“Crann, lovely to see you again, how did you recognise me?”

“One can easily tell it’s you,” Crann replied with a smile.

“Right, shall we?” said Bol and the group spread out to gather their equipment.

The group marched to the entrance of the site, a large hole that had been created by the archaeologists in order to free the actual entrance to the construction that was underground. A few structures protruded from the entrance like black-dark-green monoliths which made Julian think of the film _2001 – A Space Odyssey_. As he looked closer at one of the monoliths, fine lines glowed up in a bright turquoise colour forming at complicated but highly elegant pattern across the object.

“You’ll get more of that inside,” Jak commented.

They moved in further. Although they soon found themselves in a space with virtually no sunlight whatsoever, it wasn’t dark by any means. A strange, eerie yet at the same time comforting glow seemed to emanate from the sight itself but one couldn’t make out a source. It was as if the light was just… _there_! Finally, the ground got even again and they found themselves in a large chamber with nothing but the glowing walls and a large hole in the ground, perfectly round and going deep into the earth.

Thuỷ looked around.

“Could there be a door in one of those walls?” she mused.

“No…” the Doctor murmured intrigued by the circle before them. He slowly approached it, his sonic ready and, while carefully moving alongside the edge, scanned the hole.

“Gravity lift,” he concluded looking up from his sonic and gazing at Julian and Thuỷ in delight.

“I _love_ gravity lifts!”

He giggled and, with a small nudge of his shoe, kicked a small stone into the hole. The three time travellers stared in amazement as the stone seemed to hover in mid-air before slowly sinking down as if riding an invisible lift.

“It’s an elevator?” Thuỷ gasped still amazed by what she saw.

“The real treasure is down there,” remarked Bol grinning.

“So…are we going to get down there by…?” Thuỷ asked hesitantly.

“GERONIMOOOO!” The Doctor cried with a wide grin and jumped straight into the hole! Just as Julian expected him to fall into what seemed nothing, something invisible caught him holding him in place.

“Come on!” the Doctor called to the others encouragingly as he was slowly taken down by the invisible force. Julian cocked his head then took two steps and jumped into the hole as well. It was the strangest sensation he ever had. It felt like sunrays tickling your skin on a warm day. At the same time he had the feeling of being underwater floating through the ocean. Instinctively, his limbs began making moved as if he wanted to keep himself at this level. Then down he went, for miles and miles down a wall with the same green pattern they had seen before.

When his feet finally touched down again, the first thing he noted was the Doctor crouching down on the floor with his sonic buzzing at the floor. When he spotted Julian, the Doctor quickly pulled him away from the gravity lift to talk to him about his findings.

“This is more, way more than I initially thought. Look!”

He stretched out his arm and waved it across their field of vision to show Julian the gigantic size of the place: it was hard to tell where there black columns of rock that had remained ended and the machinery began. In fact, in many cases the machinery seemed to have been implemented into the rock itself! Whoever had created this had carved out a massive chunk of rock reforming the place to an enormous cave so high that, in some areas Julian could see on the horizon, two Burj Khalifa could have been erected on top of each other! In those places, two pyramid-shaped objects had been erected, both on the ground and on the ceiling. Each was nearly touching the other one.

Behind them the others were arriving.

“Holy crap, that’s huge!” Thuỷ let out in awe staring at the dark yet bright surroundings. “What is it exactly?”

“It is believed to be an artificial construct designed to keep the planet in a state of balance,” said 12A05F07F.

“We’re still not sure who built it,” explained Ene.

“Well, whatever it is,” Julian said, “…it is sublime!”

This was why he had decided to come into the TARDIS. To explore the wonders of the cosmos, to see the unbelievable! And here it was, before him, something that none of his fellow 21st-century inhabitants would ever see. At least not in real life; but it was a billion times better and more impressive in real life than in any sort of video game or film or TV series! Julian could not wait to see more!


	8. The Theses of Martin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the era of Reformation! The Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ witness an important trial and discover the importance of media and the roots of mass propaganda and trolling...

It had been two whole days since they had left the year 5,000,000,012 and explored what had turned out to be a vast singularity spreading throughout the planet. Who had originally built it and for what purpose wasn’t clear anymore, only that it was instrumental in keeping the environment at balance. Something that Julian felt could have been quite useful on Earth in 2018 with the dawn of a massive climate change.

The three time travellers had agreed on making an extensive break before traveling onward which the Doctor wanted to use to fuel up the TARDIS. So he had taken them to Cardiff of all places where, as the Time Lord explained, a spacetime rift was located here which emitted a slow radiation leakage that could be used to recharge the time machine. Since the process would take about 24 hours, the Doctor took Julian and Thuỷ sight-seeing as neither of them had ever been to Cardiff.

“…so the TARDIS turned the Slitheen back into an egg, gave her a second chance: problem solved.” The Doctor said as they were making their way through Roald Dahl Plass back to the TARDIS.

Julian scoffed slightly.

“The TARDIS really did that?”

“Yes!” the Doctor exclaimed as they approached the time machine.

“I wonder what else it has in store…” Julian murmured.

“More than you could find out in a lifetime,” the Time Lord chanted proudly.

* * *

As they walked through the vastness that was the wardrobe, Thuỷ suddenly made a double take.

“Hold on,” she said pointing to a painting on the wall. “Is that a Warhol painting? I’ve never seen that piece.”

Julian too glanced at it: it showed a very handsome looking young man with short, modern hair, a blue suit and a light brown Duster-type overcoat. Next to him was a girl with dark skin and a red jacket.

“Is that her?” Julian asked. “Martha Jones?”

The Doctor sighed as he walked over to them examining the painting himself.

“That’s us all right,” he murmured. He seemed to remember memories from long ago, lost in thought for a moment. Then he shook himself and turned to leave.

“You look really hot,” Julian observed looking at the Doctor’s former incarnation causing the Doctor to turn around.

“I know,” the Doctor replied cheekily causing Julian to look at him, grinning.

“How did you get to know him?” Thuỷ asked as they arrived at the section of the fashion of the 16th century.

“Oh, Hergé introduced me,” the Doctor remarked going through the various robes. Julian’s jaw dropped.

“Hergé??? The author of _The Adventures of Tintin_?”

“Yeah, I met him quite a few times over the years. Last I met him he was just working on _Tintin and Alph-Art_ , his last, unfinished work. I had this framed as a memorial of our last meeting with him.”

He pointed to a framed picture showing pencil-drawn notes, outlines and sketches, one of which depicting a very familiar box and two people whom Julian unmistakably recognised as the Doctor and the woman called Martha Jones.

The three changed into clothing appropriate for the time period they were about to visit. The Doctor set in space-time coordinates and with the TARDIS’s usual _Vworp Vworp Vworp_ they were off. When the TARDIS landed, Thuỷ looked at the display showing them where and when they were.

“Wednesday, April 18, 1521, Worms,” she read.

“The second day of Martin Luther’s trial,” the Doctor explained as he made for the doors, “On the first, he requested a day for a proper answer. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

Dressed as burghers, the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ exited the TARDIS to find themselves inside a building.

“The Heylshof,” the Doctor explained.

“This is where the bishops of Worms reside. It’s also where the emperor has decided to lodge during the time of the trial.”

“He has come in person?” Thuỷ asked astonished.

“Yes, but he doesn’t understand German, he speaks French. Which is why he will be represented by Johann von Eck, assistant of the archbishop of Trier. This way.”

The Doctor led them to a door guarded by two men to which the Time Lord presented his psychic paper. The two guards bowed instantly and led them in. The hall was already filled with guests following the events of the trial: princes, counts and earls, ambassadors even. Most importantly, the electors had assembled as well, among them an elderly man who seemed to already know the Doctor who made the introductions.

“Julian, Thuỷ: may I present to you Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony. Serenity, these are fellow travellers of mine: Julian Heller and his wife, Lady Thuỷ.”

Julian and Thuỷ bowed before the elector who nodded in return. As the Doctor and his companions sat beside Frederick the Wise, the doors opened anew and a mumble filled the hall as a thin man dressed in monks robes entered followed by several scholars from Wittenberg University and two guards. Martin Luther had entered the scene.

“The wrath of the emperor he will raise either way,” another elector whispered to Frederick.

“Better the wrath of the emperor than the wrath of God,” Frederick whispered back with a worried expression at a man dressed in regal clothing sitting on a throne at the end of the hall. A few feet before him, two tables had been brought on which several books had been collected.

Martin Luther walked up to the tables and stood there in silence. The emperor whispered to a man dressed in black robes who nodded and went to the other side of the tables facing Luther. It had to be Eck, the assistant of the archbishop.

“Martin Luther,” Eck began, “Do you acknowledge yourself the author of these writings?”

“Yes, these books are mine,” Luther replied.

“You have been asked to retract the doctrines herein. Will you defend all your writings or disavow some of them?” Eck asked further.

Luther looked at him when he replied:

“I entreat your majesty and the states of the empire to consider that my writings do not all treat of the same matter. Some of them are perceptive, destined for the edification of the faithful, for the advancement of piety, for the amelioration of manners; yet the bull, while admitting the innocence and advantage of such treatises, condemns these equally with the rest. If I were to disavow them, what practically should I be doing? Proscribing a mode of instruction which every Christian sanctions, and thus putting myself in opposition to the universal voice of the faithful.

In others I attack the papacy and the belief of the papists, as monstrosities, involving the ruin of sound doctrine and of men's souls. The pope's decretals have thrown utter disorder into Christianity, have surprised, imprisoned, and tortured the faith of the faithful...contrary to the gospel. If I were to retract these writings, I would lend additional strength and audacity to the Roman tyranny and open the floodgates to the torrent of impiety, making for it a breach by which it would rush in and overwhelm the Christian world.”

The assembled electors and guests exchange glances and murmur filled the hall causing Eck to shout “ORDER!” making Julian having the weird feeling of sitting in the House of Commons.

Eck sighed and turned to Luther once again.

“Martin – answer candidly and without horns – do you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors which they contain?”

Luther’s answer came calm yet with a hint of nervousness in his voice.

“Since then your imperial majesty and your lordships demand a simple answer…I will give you one without teeth and without horns. Unless I am convicted of error by the testimony of Scripture or by manifest evidence...I cannot and will not retract, for we must never act contrary to our conscience....”

He stopped for a moment sighing before saying:

“…Here I stand. God help me! Amen!”

There was an eerie silence in the room, Eck stood there with a shocked expression helplessly shrugging and shaking his head while the emperor, while not understanding what exactly Luther had said, certainly could read from the expressions of the assembled people that Luther had refused to retract.

Luther spoke anew, this time in Latin. Whispering, Julian turned to the Doctor:

“I thought the TARDIS could make me understand all languages in the universe?”

The Doctor smiled.

“It is not just the TARDIS. I am also a part of the translation circuit. And if the situation requires, the understanding of certain languages may not work. We don’t want to confuse the natives of this time.”

The emperor rose from his throne and abruptly left the room. Murmur filled the hall again and the Doctor motioned for his companions to leave.

“But he wasn’t really radical when you think about it, was he?” Julian questioned as they were striding back to the TARDIS. The Doctor stopped to turn to Thuỷ and Julian who continued:

“He just wanted to change an incrusted institution much like other reformers before him; he was one heretic among many. He just happened to have more luck and publicity.”

“You’re right,” the Doctor said placing a hand on Julian’s shoulder.

“However, he faced the obstinacy of the pope and the emperor and the end of feudalism which is still clinging to every bit of power it can grasp. This is a new time of new discoveries and ideas emerging in a social structure that is ancient and outdated. And as you will soon see, the great reformers like Luther, Calvin and Zwingli retreated to defenders of law and order, the old hierarchy that they will never question. It is not what they want foremost but what they do along the way that will contribute to a war and social change that they never wanted.”

“And what is it that Luther will do along the way?” Thuỷ asked as they entered the TARDIS.

“Looking at the crowd's mouth,” the Doctor grinned as he flipped the lever and the TARDIS began to rock and shake its way to another time and place.

* * *

As they emerged, they stood outside, on the battlements of a castle.

“This is where Luther was hidden by that elector we met?” Thuỷ wondered as they stepped through a door leading to a long corridor.

“Wartburg Castle!” the Doctor said extending his arms. He led them through a few more corridors and stairs until they reached a small room where a man with a thick beard was sitting at a small desk filled with manuscripts. Next to him, on another desk were various copies of the Bible in Greek and Latin.

“Brother Martin,” said the Doctor, “I’m the Doctor; these are my friends, Julian and Thuỷ. We’ve come to help with the translation.”

“Did Melanchthon send you?” Luther asked, almost unrecognisable with his thick beard and hair, a well thought of precaution.

“Yes, he tells me that you may need help with Greek,” the Doctor replied examining a large, thick book, the pages of which were divided into two halves, Greek on the left and Latin on the right.

“Ah,” said the Time Lord excited and admiring, “The great Latin translation of Erasmus of Rotterdam!”

He flipped through the pages.

“Oh, yes, very well translated, oooh, I love that part!”

Julian frowned. Thuỷ examined another book.

“Is that the Vulgate?” she asked.

“Indeed,” said Luther, “Though I’m surprised that a woman has knowledge of such things.”

Thuỷ gave him a glare angrily throwing the book back onto the table. Julian followed her as she went into the next room exploring the castle.

“Looks quite different from our time,” he remarked trying to sound casual to distract her.

“This sounds quite familiar sometimes even at home,” Thuỷ said referring to Luther’s statement to her.

“The best we can do is to continue fighting against that,” Julian replied observing two angel statues at the other end of the rather long room containing a bed.

“I do wonder whether he was lonely here,” Thuỷ wondered.

“I read that Philipp Melanchthon and Georg Spalatin came to visit him from time to time,” Julian said looking at her. She looked back staring into his eyes, then blinked.

Julian gasped as he felt a sudden, second-long feeling as if being dragged somewhere. It seemed to be over as soon as it had begun. He blinked. It wasn’t quiet anymore. He could hear dozens of voices chatting away, a cart and a horse moving nearby and the noises of shoes hitting the mud.

He looked around trying to make sense of what had just happened. He appeared to be near a market place. Noticing that the people around him wore a different kind of fashion, Julian took out his smartphone and checked the date. According to the updated device in his hand, he was in Mainz and it was Thursday, July 8th, 1452. He had travelled 69 years into the past! How???

Taking a deep breath, Julian clicked on the TARDIS App and put the phone to his ear.

“Come on, come on, _please_ , answer!” he whispered. The beep went on and on. He waited; and waited; but the TARDIS was too far away for the Doctor to hear or he would have certainly answered. Frustrated, Julian ended the call.

“Are you lost, sir?”

Julian turned around quickly hiding the phone. An elderly man with a long white beard stood before him.

“Yes…uh…indeed. It’s my first time in Mainz. I’m looking for shelter.”

“I see. What brings you here?” the man asked.

Julian tried to think of a believable answer. Mid-15th century…what had happened then…?

“I heard that there was…um…a new way to…spread books,” he stammered. “A kind of…printing process.”

The man raised his eyebrows.

“How did you know?” he whispered.

“I’m a big supporter of this idea…because…I’ve written a book myself and try to publish it,” Julian said and stretched out his hand.

“Julian Heller.”

“Johannes Gutenberg,” the man replied.

Julian’s jaw dropped.

“Oh…Yeah! Nice to meet you; Um…I’ve become acquainted with…Johann Fust,” he replied.

“Ah, one of my great supporters,” Gutenberg answered. “If you would follow me, Master Heller, I can show you my work. I think I’ve finally managed to get the hang of it.”

* * *

“DOCTOR!!!!” Thuỷ cried pressing herself to a wall. She heard fast approaching steps and soon enough the Doctor arrived accompanied by Luther.

“Whoa!” the Doctor managed to say when he spotted the angel statue.

“Don’t turn away, Thuỷ, keep looking at them!”

“How did they get in here? They weren’t here yesterday,” Luther remarked.

“THEY MOVED!” Thuỷ screamed, hear heat racing, her breath heavy.

“It’s all right, just keep looking at them AND DON’T BLINK!”

She trembled and stumbled backwards, her hands shaking desperate to find the Doctor’s. She tripped over something on the floor and tumbled down causing the Doctor and Luther to rush to her aid.

“NO! MARTIN, KEEP LOOKING!” the Doctor shouted while helping Thuỷ up. Her eyes widened as the angels were now three feet away, their faces contorted to a fierce demonic silent roar and one of them had its arm stretched out as if to grab her.

“What the devil?” Luther gasped. The Doctor and Thuỷ were now in the door frame.

“Get back to the TARDIS and prepare her for launch, take him with you,” the Doctor told her. Thuỷ nodded and turned to Luther.

“Come one!” she said and stormed off. But he evidently was too scared to follow her as she her the Doctor yell “RUN!”. She raced back to the corridor where they had gone through wondering what had happened to Julian. Was he dead? Gone from existence? Would they be able to get him? She was now reaching the battlements where the TARDIS stood…

* * *

The workshop of Master Gutenberg wasn’t large but it was enough space to fit his new invention inside. Several aides were working on different parts of the printing process. Julian couldn’t help but to admire this scene in awe: huge milestones in history and he was lucky to see them! For a moment he forgot what had brought him here and that he was possibly stranded her for a long time.

“How did you get this idea?” Julian asked impressed.

“Well, first I thought: why don’t I disassemble a text into its individual parts – letters, punctuation marks, ligatures…and I moved them around reassembling them into a different text. That was the core idea of it: to be able to cast re-usable the letters which I can shape into the text I desire.”

He moved to a table.

“So first, a letter is to be engraved laterally reversed into a metal rod. Said letter is then pressed into soft cupper. That way, an imprint of the letter is created which we call a matrix. This matrix serves as a mould for the actual letters which are casted from lead.”

He went to another, larger table where a man sat on a stool in from of a giant board.

“If the letters are present, the typesetter then sets the letters into the various lines on this composing gallery where the desired page is being created. The thus created print space or type area is then blackened with printing ink made out of lamp black, varnish and egg white.”

Julian watched Master Gutenberg applying the printing ink onto the page himself and moving the type area into the printing press. Finally he turned the framed page allowing Julian to see what he had printed and saw that it was a certificate. The Middle High German translated in front of Julian’s eyes into modern High German.

“That is truly amazing, Master Gutenberg!”

The elderly man smiled proudly.

“If you’d excuse me for a moment,” Julian asked.

“Certainly.”

Julian moved to another room where he was alone and quietly took out his smartphone and pressed the TARDIS app.

“ _Please!!!_ ”

All he was hearing were beeps. Then finally, someone answered.

“At TARDIS! This is the Doctor speaking!”

Julian couldn’t help himself to chuckle.

“Doctor, it’s me, Julian! I’m…I don’t know…I’ve been sort of teleported into the past, can you come and get me?”

With the familiar sound of the TARDIS in the background, the Doctor’s voice came in again shouting:

“We’ve just had a little complication but we’re coming to you. Just hold the line so I can pinpoint you!”

“Okay, I’m going outside.”

Watching Gutenberg and his aides still being busy with the printing, Julian tip-toed to the door and quickly ran outside and into an alley.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

He took the phone from his ear and leaned against the wall breathing heavily. A few seconds, nothing happened. But then he heard it, like a faint breeze, then louder. The sound that the TARDIS made, so soothing for him to hear, his life ring!

Then, to his right, the blue box appeared and fully materialised itself. The familiar squeak of the opening door came right after it and the Doctor ran out looking around.

“Okay…Mainz…1452! Very important year! _Julian!_ ”

The Doctor’s gaze fell on Julian who ran up to him and pulled him into a tight hug.

“Thank you! _Thank you!_ ” he whispered into the Time Lord’s ear.

“It’s okay! You’re safe! And we are safe, we’re all safe!” The Doctor mumbled back letting go of Julian. Spotting Thuỷ standing behind the Doctor, Julian darted towards her and the two hugged as well.

“WHAT happened?!” Julian finally asked. “What was it that brought me here?”

“It was some sort of stone creature….I-I don’t know, the Doctor can explain it better–”

“A Weeping Angel, that’s what they’re called, sometimes also the Lonely Assassins. And it’s not stone, it’s a quantum lock, it turned into a statue as long as you’re looking at it. That’s why they seem to be weeping; they can’t even dare to look at each other. They feed of your potential energy by sending you back. Nicest way of murdering someone; letting you live to death.”

Julian tilted his head.

“Well, I suppose there are worse way to die. Although the shock of it…being stuck forever into the past…if it weren’t for you…”

The three of them stood silently there, glancing at each other.

“So…did you get rid of it?” Julian asked.

“Yeah, we did,” Thuỷ, “We tricked them into looking at each other and then the Doctor put it somewhere…I don’t know how exactly the Doctor managed it, some sort of Time Lord…stuff. A frozen moment or something.”

“A status cube,” the Doctor said. “But that’s the thing with the Angels; anything that looks like an angel becomes itself an Angel. Had to trap it somewhere where no one would ever find it.”

Julian nodded.

“All right…what are we doing now? Do we go back? Do we stay?”

The Doctor looked at his two companions.

“Well…that’s up to you two.”

Thuỷ looked at Julian:

“I want to see the fruits of Luther’s bible translation. The man himself might not be that impressive or exemplary but his work had a wide-ranging effect.”

Julian nodded.

“Well, Doctor. Where should we go then?”

The Doctor smiled.

* * *

The Doctor and his companions had changed clothes to appear more like the general population. They had landed on a small market place and watched as people gathered in front of a travelling salesman.

“Look here, people!” the salesman called out, “The New Testament in the German Language by Martin Luther!”

A young man made his way through the crowd until he was only a couple of feet away from the salesman who regarded him.

“Can you read?” he asked the young man.

“Yes.”

The salesman held out the book to him encouragingly.

“Then read!”

The young man opened the book and gazed astonished onto the pages and flicked through them. The salesman watched the man’s excitement and then extended his arms.

“A sample!” he declared, “Gather along and listen! Hear him read the New Testament in the German Language by Martin Luther!”

He patted the man on his shoulder and led him to a podium.

“Reading out loud,” the Doctor explained to Julian and Thuỷ, “A widespread custom in a time where few people know how to decipher the letters.”

The young man gulped and took a deep breath before beginning:

“Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

As Julian and Thuỷ listened to the man reading, the wind suddenly blew something to them nearly hitting Thuỷ in the face. She caught it and looked at it: it was a pamphlet showing Luther drawn with devil’s horns.

“The downside of the printing press,” Julian commented. “The first trolls…”

“How is Luther dealing with this?” Thuy wondered.

The Doctor smiled.

“Let’s find out!”

* * *

As the three of them sat down in the small church, people began applauding as their hero entered the church. The former monk made his way up to the podium. Luther held up his hands to bring silence into the room filled with applause.

“Does God speak German? That is what they have asked me? Yes, I say to you, yes! How else would he have understood your prayers? God has understood your prayers and he answered them!”

Among further applause, a peasant man stood up.

“Is this also true for the prayers of the peasants?” he asked.

Julian watched Luther’s reaction: he lowered his head and took a deep breath before looking at the peasant again.

“God listens to the peasants as well. And he sees the injustice that is done to them. But…to retaliate with injustice against injustice is not the will of God. _That_ is the will of the devil.”

“Doctor,” Thuỷ as she, Julian and the Time Lord rose to leave, “If Luther retreated to defender of law and order, supporting the princes, who did the peasants turn to?”

“Ah,” said the Doctor, “someone who was an outstanding orator…”

* * *

The TARDIS materialised in a small town in front of a church.

“Allstedt,” the Doctor said, “Chosen home of Thomas Müntzer, a Protestant pastor who not only went against the Catholic Church like Luther but also questioned the established social order. He was one of the first to hold the entire sermon in German.”

They sat among the gathering people in the nice-looking church as they saw Müntzer climb to the pulpit. Looking at his listeners, he began:

“Brothers! Sisters! You have arrived in great numbers! And so shall it be for we want to celebrate the word of God. Together! But not in Latin; Here, in Allstedt, I will spread His word: in your tongue! Let us sing and praise our Lord.”

He raised his arms. The he and the crowd began to chant:

_Gott, heil’ger Schöpfer,_

_aller Stern_

_Erleucht’ uns_

_die wir sind so fern._

It was empowering. The whole church was filled with song and the people, finally understanding what they were singing, revelled in it. Even Julian and Thuỷ, neither of them believing, sang along. It wasn’t so much the song that mattered to them but the feeling of community.

When silence fell again, Müntzer began to speak anew:

“God is just. He doesn’t allow tyranny. He augurs everyone freedom and equality. Not only in Heaven but already here, on Earth! This is why He will rip the sword from the unjust rulers and give it to the people!”

“Let Him to it then! Here with the sword!” one peasant shouted.

“We have suffered enough!” cried another.

Roars filled the church and peasants stood up yelling approvingly. Müntzer watched the scene calmly and held up this right hand to calm the people down.

“The time of harvest is near,” he said, “Soon the day will come when God will separate the wheat from the chaff.”

Exultation filled the room ad people rammed their fist into the air and cried in joy.

“That was something!” Julian commented as the three time travellers left the church after the sermon.

“It won’t stay that way,” prophesied the Doctor. “See that monastery on the hill? Tonight, Müntzer’s followers will storm its chapel plundering it taking what was once theirs by force. They will destroy statues of saints seeing them as proof of the church’s extravagance. And that’s only the beginning.”

* * *

The TARDIS landed in a peasant village where dozens of men and women gathered before a table where an elegantly dressed man counted their taxes.

“The Tithe,” commented the Doctor, “a tax form of the middle Ages. The peasants have to give their manorial lord ten percent of their possessions – fruits, vegetables and so forth. And here, now, also in the form of animals they possess.”

“Robbing them of their livelihood,” Julian whispered disgusted.

In that moment, a noble man, an earl, rode into the village on a horse. Two guards were accompanying him.

One of the peasants, a man with a thin beard and a staff on which a shoe had been tied, cried out to the earl:

“It’s egregious wrong to demand the Tithe for animals alongside our harvest!”

“How dare you to doubt the legitimacy of our action?” the earl said in a harsh tone.

“He who holds livestock has to pay the Tithe for it! So says the Bible. And our pastor here vouches for it.”

He pointed to a man standing next to the man collecting and counting the taxes who bowed to the lord.

“How so? We have read it ourselves! In the bible by Luther, it says nothing of this!”

“Hold your tongue, peasant, your loud mouth will do you no good!” the earl warned him. “You’ll give your Tithe on all your cattle. In this manner of through coins; When something is missing, it goes before jurisdiction.”

“And if the emperor himself is our judge, we will be as steadfast as Dr Luther himself!” the peasant cried raising his staff.

“Come on, let’s get out of here, this is going to get ugly,” the Doctor whispered who had watched the scene from afar with his companions. Turning their back to the ever louder cries which soon mixed with painful moans, they headed back to the TARDIS. Looking back to the crowd of peasants, Julian saw that the man who had held the staff, the Bundschuh, had gotten hold of the earl and stripped him of his clothes leaving him only in undergarments. The crowd cheered as the earl was coerced to walk ahead while peasants with clubs kept bashing onto his body until nothing but a bloody mass remained. Julian quickly went inside the time machine.

“Eventually, Müntzer will lead the peasants into an insurrection,” the Doctor explained while approaching the console. “But they will be no match for the superior firepower of the princes’ soldiers. All of the peasants and Müntzer will be executed. The price for wanting freedom.”

Neither Julian nor Thuỷ had anything to add to this. So they merely acknowledged the Doctor’s statement and headed for a shower and wardrobe change…


	9. Brave New World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The TARDIS acts on her own and takes the Doctor and his companions to the year 2035...except it's not their 2035! Julian and Thuỷ find themselves not only in the future but in a future that seems to be vastly different from what they've come to know. Things that will be are mixed with things that could be and both Julian and Thuỷ react different to this parallel world. Would you like to find out what could have been? Would it delight you or disappoint you?...

“So: where to next?” Thuỷ asked excitingly.

“I’ll…tell…you…in…a…moment…” the Doctor grimaced clearly having more trouble than usual to steer the TARDIS. It began to rotate faster than ever and then sparks flew from the rotor which how emitted a nasty roaring sound and the lights flickered. The Doctor groaned, screamed trying to regain control when finally, with a heavy thud, the time machine landed hard on the ground making them all fall to the floor.

“What happened?” Thuỷ gasped. The Doctor got up panting and looked at the monitor to check where and when they had landed.

“Huh?” he asked, still out of breath. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no! That’s not where we wanted to go! Why did you do that?” he asked the TARDIS.

“Why, what’s up?” Thuỷ wondered joining him at the monitor.

“That’s 2035! Climate change causes multiple disasters in Europe and the US, forests burn, dozens of people die from the heat, the crops have dried out and farm animals need to be slaughtered early, Kiribati is drowned by the rising sea, China invades Taiwan, half of Europe leaves the EU and the first AfD coalition with the CDU begins in Saxony…” He looked at Thuỷ.

“Not a good year!”

A bright beam of sunlight flowed into the TARDIS.

“I don’t know,” said Julian from the doors; “Looks fine to me! Great, in fact, come on out!”

Frowning, the Doctor and Thuỷ looked towards him as he stepped out of the TARDIS. Glancing at each other, they slowly followed him.

They had landed directly at Jungfernstieg Street, right on the corner to Ballindamm. They were looking directly at the Alster river. They were standing in front of traffic lights where the street took a turn to the left at which point Ballindamm began. On the right side of that street was the entrance to the Europa Passage Mall. On the pavement where they were standing, right next to them on the right, was a huge sign like a slim billboard signalling them that this was the entrance to a U-Bahn station;

However, despite being clearly recognisable as that street intersection, the scenery before them looked nothing like the Hamburg in there time: tall skyscrapers had risen occasionally, both on the horizon before them as to the other directions around them. Many old buildings that Julian and Thuỷ knew from their time had remained although some had gotten a new façade often with large bill boards that seemed to be integrated into the walls themselves; a new bus station stood a few feet away from them which looked very futuristic displaying short ads and commercials in addition to bus schedules. The cars looked sleek in such a manner that you couldn’t distinguish the front from the back. They also seemed to drive on their own on closer inspection. The same seemed to go for busses and other vehicles. The bike lanes were bigger.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to look like,” the Doctor commented, his face serious.

“Are those zeppelins?” Thuỷ wondered looking into the air. Now Julian recognised them too: instead of airplanes, a few futuristic zeppelins were occasionally spread throughout the sky.

“Hamburg should be dealing with the aftermath of a flood right about now,” the Doctor continued to observe, “It’s too…clean for this time period.”

“What do you think this is, then? A parallel world?” Thuỷ asked.

The Doctor nodded.

“Must be so…although the walls have closed, it shouldn’t have been possible for the TARDIS to get through, not after the Time War!”

He went back inside the time machine to see whether it had taken any damage.

“Saturday, August 11 2035, 1 p.m. …no rain for the next three hours,” Julian read off his smartphone which had updated to show them where and when they were.

“What do you think this means?” Thuỷ mused looking at him, “Do you think climate change has been dealt with better in this universe?”

“The only way we’ll know is if we do research,” Julian replied looking back at her. Then a huge grin formed on his face.

“This has always been my dream! Visiting a parallel world, just like His Dark Materials. Oh, man! The deviations that could have happened!”

“I would be 39 now…and you’d be 43,” Thuỷ observed. “What path did we take here? Did we meet the Doctor, did we finish out studies; did we study at all?”

The Doctor returned.

“Looks like we won’t be able to move for 24 hours, maybe even 48. Let’s have a look around in this place.”

The two humans grinned as the Doctor marched onwards.

“Who are these people with the white triangle on their left arm and back?” Julian asked. The Doctor discretely aimed his sonic screwdriver at one of them and looked at the scan results.

“Androids,” he concluded. “Almost all of those who do work around here.”

A drone flew passed them carrying a package. In fact, several drones hovered over them, perhaps for security. Julian observed their environment, the architecture, the people walking past them. This was the closest to his and Thuỷ’s time as they had got so far. All those people around them…the younger ones must have been babies in 2018 or not even born yet! It felt weird to be around people, some of who were already alive in his time…

“I wonder where the histories of this universe and ours split,” Thuỷ mused.

“Hard to tell,” said the Doctor, “perhaps we can get hold of some history books.”

He pointed to a store across the street and the three time and space travellers crossed the street. A bell ringed when they entered. A young man at the counter spotted them. He wore a triangle on his left arm.

“Good day, Mr. Heller, it’s nice to see you again.”

Although his voice sounded just as real as any other human and although he sounded polite and friendly, something was missing nonetheless. As if he was reading the lines off a sheet or something; what astonished Julian the most however was that the android has recognised him.

“Uh…” Julian stuttered. “Th…anks…um, have I been here often?”

“You have been here approximately 1027 times,” the android replied.

Julian looked at the Doctor who just gave him a surprised look in return. Slowly, they made their way through the book store. The historical section was just around the corner. Spotting a rather large book titled _The History of the World_ Julian ran towards the shelf and picked it up. Flipping through the pages, he found it to be richly illustrated with pictures, graphics and special information towards certain subjects. It went from the birth of the earth to March 2035.

“Can we buy this book?” Julian asked the Doctor with a hint of uncertainty. The Doctor, catching what he was going to say, replied:

"Of course you can buy this book! As long as you keep it to yourself. We could keep it in the TARDIS if you like."

As Julian turned to bring the book to the counter the bell rang anew as the door to the store opened and a woman in her 40s with long blond hair entered.

"What do you think we'll find inside, Julian?" Thuỷ asked him admiring the book.

"Well, we'll know in a few minutes," Julian replied.

"Julian?" they heard someone ask and turned finding the woman who had just entered the store staring incredulously at him.

"I thought we had agreed on meeting at – hang on..." the woman said stepping closer to him clutching her bag onto her shoulder.

"You’re taller! …And are you younger?"

Julian gulped and forced himself to breathe slowly.

"I'm not Julian," he said trying to sound confident, "You must have mistaken me for someone else."

"Please don't lie to me, I've heard her calling you 'Julian'! And what happened to your glasses, I thought you couldn't bear wearing contact lenses..."

"Hi, um, excuse me..." the Doctor interrupted quickly shaking the woman's hand, "Ms. um..."

"Rickert. Nadine Rickert," the woman said.

"I believe there's been a mistake here, we gotta dash, so I'm afraid we have to..."

"Have we met?" Julian asked now interrupting the Doctor who sighted closing his eyes in frustration.

"What? You know who I am!"

Julian shook his head.

"I'm afraid I don't. I am not the Julian you're looking for."

Nadine shook her head in disbelief, her eyes wandering all over Julian's body causing Julian to believe that, whoever he was in this universe, he looked slightly different than he himself.

"Okay...let's go outside and we'll promise to explain all of this," the Doctor said leading the way back onto the street.

"What do you mean? Who are you?" Nadine asked. The Time Lord turned.

"I'm the Doctor."

Nadine stopped in her tracks and, seizing the Doctor up and down, chuckled.

"Really? The Doctor?" She turned to Julian. "I thought we decided to keep role-playing to ourselves, why didn't you tell me?"

Julian raised his eyebrows.

"Look, I don't know what role-playing you're referring to, although I'd be excited to find out. Like I already told you, I'm not the Julian you know."

"We'll explain it to you, come with us, it's not far." the Doctor said.

Still frowning, but all the more curious, Nadine followed them.

"What made you change your mind so quickly?" Thuỷ wanted to know from the Doctor.

"Oh, I know the temptation you lot get with this sort of thing...parallel worlds. Been there before, you'd do anything to find out the life you could have had. Seems to be inevitable, might as well give in."

"Admit it, you're curious too, aren't you?" Thuỷ grinned. "You want to know your role in this. It all because of you that Julian is even alive, you saved his grandfather. So you must exist here."

The Doctor didn't say anything and kept walking but Thuỷ sensed that she had guessed right. They crossed the street to where the TARDIS still stood.

"Welcome...to our transport!" the Doctor declared opening the door stepping inside. Julian and Thuỷ followed with Nadine slowly following them.

"What the...?" she gasped staring in disbelief at the interior of the TARDIS.

"Time and Relative Dimension in Space...TARDIS for short." the Doctor explained extending his arms proudly. "We came here from another dimension, a parallel universe, similar but different."

He stepped towards her and regarded her seriously.

"This isn't the Julian you know, Nadine. He has lived an entirely different life for all you know. Now, we'll be off tomorrow. We shouldn't be here too long."

"But we want to learn as much as possible about this Earth," Julian added also approaching Nadine.

"You mean me?" Nadine retorted, "And...you. My you...my Julian."

Julian nodded.

Nadine bit her lip looking down for a moment before facing him again.

"Come with me then. I'll take you to where we live. He's meeting a friend, we wanted to meet later on. You can use the time."

Leading the way, she and Julian exited the TARDIS and waited for a self-driving taxi to pick them up. The Doctor turned to Thuỷ.

"Aren't you curious?" he asked.

"Of course I am," she replied. "But I'm also afraid...who knows how my life has worked out for me here? And I'm not really keen on actually meeting myself."

"Well, you don't have to," the Doctor said offering his arm which Thuỷ took. They stepped back outside marvelling at the scenery before them.

"Isn't this wonderful?" he asked. "Each and every decision, each and every event happening or not happening creates a new universe. And we just moved through a couple of millions just now including ours."

He beamed at her. Thuỷ smiled as well and walked ahead to the bus station where a bus was just arriving stopping among other places at the university. Like the other vehicle, this one didn't have a driver either. As they sat down, Thuỷ looked at her Smartphone to find that she could access the internet. Though she could actually choose from several search engines beside Google, including some that she had never heard of either because they did not exist yet in her time or because they didn't exist in her universe. She typed in her name but hesitated to click on the enter button. She gulped and put her phone back into her pocket.

* * *

The house looked nice. It was an architectural style not familiar to Julian. Nadine led him inside. A female android was walking around the house tidying up, cleaning the tables, shelves and windows.

“Nice crib,” Julian commented. Nadine watched him exploring the house still processing the fact that she had met a version of her boyfriend from another universe.

“Yeah, we can afford it together,” she replied. Julian stopped in front of a row of pictures attached to a wall. They showed Nadine with a man of about 43 years old. It was weird seeing himself like that: his thin, not very muscular body, the untidy haircut, the glasses, the mouth which was slightly higher placed than Julian’s own with a thinner upper lip. And where those hearing aids?

Julian sighed.

Walking up the stairs, he easily found the room that belonged to his other self. He grinned as he spotted the learning material for the study of Sinology. So his other self _had_ actually been studying the subject. But as he discovered while roaming through the files, it was apparently only for three semesters! Was it the bad hearing that had forced the other Julian to give up study? Continuing his research, Julian discovered that, in this universe, he had switched to Regensburg University and studied General Linguistics for two semesters before giving up entirely.

Julian gulped.

As he was skipping through the bookshelf to find further evidence of his career, a knock at the door interrupted him.

“I’d never thought I’d…”

It was strange hearing himself talk. As Julian stared incredulously at his other self, he noticed that he was smaller in this universe, about ten centimetres.

“Yeah…yes, it is…” Julian responded with wide eyes.

* * *

The area where the Asia-Africa Faculty lay looked different than in their universe, not only because of the advanced technology but because several buildings had apparently either never been built here or had been torn down in favour of a lush green park where the Doctor and Thuỷ sad down to read the book they had bought. A couple of androids roamed the park, some cleaning it, others working on the lanterns or babysitting children playing on the playground.

“Look at this!”, Thuỷ whispered to the Doctor pointing on a passage in the book.

“Quite a few changes compared to our timeline: Oskar Lafontaine became chancellor in 1998 sending the SPD on a more leftist course again…hang on a second.”

She quickly googled the words _Hartz IV_.

“No results available! Wow! It seems the SPD continued to be a worker’s party instead of making politics for the industry. No Agenda 2010, the poor people are actually being supported; the job centre is actually working to provide jobs for those people…”

“ _It was not until 2021 that the CDU managed to lead the government again only to be voted out of office again four years later_ ,” the Doctor read aloud.

A large billboard in front of them began to broadcast the 2 o’clock news. Thuỷ stood up and pressed a button so that the audio could be heard.

“ _Chancellor Annika Kirschbaum, SPD, in office since 2025, flew to the US today. The first female German chancellor met the first female American President, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, famous for initiating the so-called Decade of the Green New Deal and continuing the work of former president Bernie Sanders who held the office of president from 2017 to 2025. Ocasio-Cortez, who holds the office since 2030 after the Republican Resident Bill Kristol resigned in 2029, talked with the German chancellor on the subject of further cooperation in dealing with new energies and technologies that will guarantee a further planet-friendly lifestyle. If all goes according to plan, other countries might join this exchange to contribute in keeping the climate as low as it is now…_ ”

“Oh man, can’t we just stay here?” Thuỷ pleaded with a grin. The Doctor flashed a sad smile at her.

* * *

“How old are you?” Other-Julian asked. His voice was

“26,” Julian answered.

“Do you study sinology?” Other-Julian inquired further as he opened his wardrobe which contained not only shirts and trousers but also blouses, bras and dresses.

Julian nodded standing up to help his other self in putting in the freshly washed clothing briefly resting his hands on a purple dress. Other-Julian noticed and regarded him with interest.

“Do you…live openly?” they asked.

Julian now regarded them and pursed his lips.

“I was living openly from the age of 15…but I haven’t had many relationships yet…and I haven’t really been daring to go out in that kind of fashion…”

Other-Julian smiled.

“Try it on,” they suggested.

“It won’t fit,” Julian protested.

“But you’ve been wanting to try,” Other-Julian said, “You know you have.”

“I’m not you!” Julian reported, “How do you know what I want?”

“We’re not so different,” Other-Julian replied. “Other than the fact that I’m born a preemie and you’re not, we have the same interests, the same identity…”

They looked down for a moment.

“Listen, I’ve been struggling too. You will get there eventually. It’s a journey.”

“That’s easy for you to say, look around you: a perfect world, no climate change, no strengthening of far-right movements, in our universe we’ve been lucky that marriage equality has been passed in Germany and, from what I’ve seen in the future, it will not look good in my universe, at least for quite some time!”

“Yeah, well, look at you!” Other-Julian retorted, “You actually fulfilled our wish to travel before you study and you’ve actually managed to have a relationship sooner than me, you didn’t have to struggle with Aspergers, or with seeing or hearing well. And above all, you’re having excellent marks, far better than I could ever dream of; your university career is looking fantastic!”

“But what good will it be if the world is turning into a hellhole?! If all of this was for nothing?”

“THEN CHANGE IT!” Other-Julian shouted. Julian stared back at them thunderstruck.

Other-Julian sighed.

“Look…when I was with the Doctor, she told me that change is always possible. We can all be capable of the most incredible change! And we can evoke change in others too. It may not be much but if you even manage to change one life for the better…that is something worth fighting for! I have worked hard to become a Medical Documentation Specialist after I failed at university and I managed to build a life for myself! But you…you’re already doing it. You didn’t make the mistakes I did, you lived a perfect life, the life I have been dreaming of. Don’t let knowledge of the future consume you. Stand up against it! And if it turns out to be a fixed point, then at least you tried!”

The two Julians stared at each other. Then Julian nodded and moved towards the door. Turning back he smiled to his other self who smiled back.

“Be whoever you want to be,” they said. “Trust yourself. Accept yourself. Go out there and change the world with…I don’t know, hold speeches, write books, whatever you want to.”

Julian gulped one last time.

“It’s been bubbling inside of me for some time now…I always knew it was there…sometimes I wanted to be female, sometimes not…sometimes I wanted to be both. But I always struggled to externalise it. I kept on a façade. A mask…thank you, Julian.”

“At the moment, I’m Julia,” they winked.

“Well then…see you around, Julia. Good luck!”

They smiled broadly.

“You too.”

Julian took his phone to his ear.

“Doctor? …Could you pick me up?”

* * *

As The TARDIS departed this same but different world, Julian leaned against the console lost in thought. It was almost irony…a better world with a life that Julia deemed worse than Julian did…as they sat, they eventually found a good life for themselves. Julian went through the endless corridors of the time machine to the library where Thuỷ was reading the book they bought in that parallel world. Almost dancing into the library, Julian came to a halt in front of her.

“Whoa, what’s going on with you? You’re practically glowing!” Thuỷ observed gleaming.

“Could you do me a favour?” Julian asked.

“Any time.”

“I’d like to know how to do make-up.”

Thuỷ raised her eyebrows and smiled.

“Right now?”

Julian nodded.

Clipping a bookmark between the pages, Thuỷ closed the book and led the way.

“Follow me, Mx.!”


	10. The Defenestration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's 1628, ten years into the Thirty Years’ War. The TARDIS Team find themselves in the Sawbian Alps where they meet Hans Heberle, the shoemaker of a local Village who writes down a chronicle of what happens around his Village. But soon the war arrives even here as an army aks for shelter before the battle...

They had landed in a small village in the Swabian Alps. The cluster of houses in the rolling plain between the mountain ranges was surrounded by fields and woods and dominated by a fortified church. The Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ exited the TARDIS looking around into the morning which was still covered with mist.

“When are we?” Thuỷ asked. The Doctor crouched down and picked up a leaf from the ground. Thuỷ frowned slightly in disgust as the Time Lord proceeded to lick the leaf tasting it.

“Early spring…1628. Ten years into the Thirty Years’ War.”

He looked up surveying the area.

“Why did the TARDIS take us here?” he wondered.

“What…you didn’t plan this?” Julian wondered.

“No…” the Doctor slowly replied sounding nervous. “I didn’t plan this…I was aiming for Hamburg…”

He set off towards the village apparently heading for a specific building. Julian and Thuỷ followed him exchanging looks. The Doctor stopped before a certain abode as the inhabitants went about their business with some looking curiously at the newcomers.

“This is it,” said the Doctor. “Weidenstetten.”

“That’s where we are?” Julian asked.

The Doctor nodded: “One of the lesser known stories in the Thirty Years’ War; and one of the few civilian accounts. The lives of ordinary people caught between the fronts…and war has already come close to this village. The city of Ulm is fifteen kilometres south from here.”

Thuỷ just shook her head.

“Thirty years of war! A whole generation growing up with nothing but war, horror and suffering!”

“And all because of religion,” Julian murmured.

The Doctor approached a young man of about 30 years old who was just returning to his small home with a garden, a barn and a small field.

“Excuse me, mister, are you the village’s shoemaker?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said, “Hans Heberle, and you are…?”

“I’m the Doctor. And these are my friends, Julian Heller and his wife Thuỷ.”

Julian and Thuỷ greeted Hans Heberle with a bow and curtsey respectively.

“We’ve been travelling through the land from Hamburg and my shoes need adjusting. I heard that you are very skilled in that work, master Hans.”

“Thank you, let me see what I can do for you,” Hans said gesturing toward the house and the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ went inside. A young woman was just making food as Hans and his guests came through the door.

“This is my wife Anna. Anna, these are the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ. They’ve come a long way and will be our guests for tonight.”

“Thank you,” said the Doctor and took of his right shoe for Hans to inspect. Thuỷ noticed the small desk in the corner and took a closer look at it. It was filled with parchment over parchment of notes, pamphlets and articles from local newspapers about events surrounding the war, sometimes as far away as Bohemia and Prussia. Thuỷ studied the articles with wide eyes. Julian joined her.

“The _Zeytregister_ ,” Julian noted, “a chronicle documenting the war from Heberle’s perspective. One of the few civilian accounts of this time.”

Thuỷ turned to look at the young shoemaker who was now fixing the Doctor’s shoe. She had no doubt that the Doctor had deliberately damaged it as an excuse to meet Heberle.

“So why has the TARDIS send us here?” Thuỷ whispered. “Do we have to protect him somehow?”

“Heberle doesn’t need protecting,” Julian said, “he will come away surprisingly unharmed. He’ll survive the war and live to the humble age of 80. But not all of his family will have that fortune…”

He sighed.

“Let’s take a look around after the meal.”

* * *

It was a simple but nonetheless delicious meal that Anna had made. It turned out that she and Hans had only married recently. The house that they owned was also quite new and they had been able to purchase it thanks to Hans’ skilled art of shoemaking. The sun had risen higher and had warmed the place up significantly. It was a beautiful day and in here, no one would certainly have the idea that a war was going on if one didn’t know it. Julian and Thuỷ spent the day walking around the village and the surrounding hills.

“Do you see that?” Julian pointed out.

Thuỷ narrowed her eyes to the direction Julian pointed to.

“Soldiers,” she remarked.

“Close to 40 men,” Julian added.

They ran back to the village just in time to see the soldiers arrive. The Doctor joined them as they stood in front of the home of the Heberles.

“Imperial troops by the looks of it,” the Doctor deduced.

“Inhabitants of Weidenstetten,” one of the commanders roared out. “The Emperor’s troops will be resting in the surrounding villages tonight. Each village will have to host 37 men. You will be required to serve them food and accommodations.”

The officers set up regiment quarters while the soldiers marched through the village randomly choosing a house to host them. The atmosphere was tense. Julian could practically feel it. The warring folk was ruthless with their demands.

“I don’t have anymore,” they heard a farmer, “please, just hear me –”

“Then you will go up there and buy us some!” the soldier demanded, “Hurry up, boy, we’re hungry!”

“We should go,” Julian whispered. The Doctor’s lips were slim. He stormed ahead towards a group of soldiers harassing a man trying to protect his life stock.

“No! I have already given you all we have; we need our cattle to survive!”

“Get out of the way, you scum!” the soldier barked.

“OI! Stop that!” the Doctor voice roared through the air. The soldiers turned towards the Time Lord.

“You’ve already taken enough from this family and your superiors were clear about their prohibitions. Now step back or I’ll have to stop you.”

The soldiers merely laughed. One of them grabbed the farmer and threw him to the ground where his fellow soldiers proceeded to beat him ferociously. The soldier then drew his sword…

The Doctor was about to pull out his sonic screwdriver as a shot echoed through the village, loud and clear. The soldier fell to the ground. Silence filled the village as everyone stared at the commanding officers looking at their men with deep fury. Without further ado, the man leading the troops gave orders to his immediate officers to apprehend several dozen men. Three of them were led straight to a tree in the middle of the village as slings were put on their necks…

Ten others were led to the regiment quarters. Julian and Thuỷ looked away as the three men’s necks snapped.

* * *

In the morning, the troops left the village heading for battle. Hans’s home was one of the few lucky enough to be spared but many families were left without money or food. Some were injured so severely that soon the church had a few more graves to fill. Julian and Thuỷ helped wherever they could while the Doctor rode to the city of Ulm, the landlord of the village. The next day, Julian and Thuỷ sat down with Hans who had just written down the events.

“How did you come to read and write?” Thuỷ asked.

“The pastor taught me,” Hans replied.

Thuỷ approached his desk and looked at the chronicle that he kept.

“How long have you been doing this?”

Hans went through his chronicle.

“For ten years…ever since what they call the Defenestration up in Prague. Here…”

He showed them a bundle of pamphlets and newspapers he had collected.

“I bought these from my earnings. We not as wealthy as some of the full-time farmers but we earn more than most of my neighbours here. I can demand more than most for a couple of shoes of women boots. Enough so that I can collect these.”

Hans hang his head down.

“They’ve never been so…cruel before here. Sure, many troops asked a lot from us in the past but these men…I heard of incidents in other regions before but…to experience it for yourself, it’s…”

He looked up at Julian and Thuỷ.

“Do you think we will get through this?”

Julian smiled.

“We will!”

The door opened letting in the setting sun and the Doctor appeared.

“Julian, Thuỷ, I need to talk to you for a moment.”

“Sure,” they said in unison and they followed the Doctor outside.

“We must leave soon. The soldiers will return,” the Doctor said. “The battle did not go well for them. We should get back to the TARDIS while we still can!” 

“What about the villagers?” Thuỷ asked. “They will need to prepare.”

“Even if we’d decide to help them, it’ll be futile. They’re already here. I rode back as fast as I could. I’m sorry, I should have taken the TARDIS…”

Before he could finish, a shot echoed through the village and a scream of horror followed. The villagers rushed up in panic, Julian could see Hans guiding his wife through the village towards the church where many men were taking cover behind the fortification of the church. Riders were swooping in, guns and swords raised. The Doctor took both of their hands as Julian evaded the blade of a sword from one of the mounted soldiers. Looking back, he saw that the soldier didn’t content himself with the missed slash and made for him again. As the sun hid behind the mountains as if she were too scared herself to witness this slaughter, the three time travellers were approaching the TARDIS.

“Don’t you flee on my watch, you lot!” they heard a growling voice as foot soldiers were encircling them. The mounted soldier got off his horse.

“I remember you,” he addressed the Time Lord.

“You call yourself Doctor! Let’s see what a good doctor you are when we’re finished with your lot here!”

Julian could see fear rising in the Doctor’s face. He gulped then stepped forward with his arms spread.

“Take me! No more regeneration, no more changing, just me! But spare them! I brought this onto them, I shall pay for it! …TAKE ME!”

The soldier with the horse shook his head slowly and grinned. He pointed to Thuỷ.

“We will have her first.”

“You have to get through me, then!” Julian exclaimed putting himself between Thuỷ and an approaching soldier. Staring grimly at him, he failed to notice the motion the man made in once quick stab.

Pain overwhelmed Julian as he stared at the blade in his stomach and then back at the soldier who pulled the blade out of him. His vision went dizzy. He could barely hear Thuỷ crying his name and managed to notice the TARDIS signature sound as the world around him faded to black…


	11. Physician Heal Thyself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Julian is healing from his injuries on Resus Station, Things quickly go south...

Julian opened his eyes slowly feeling weak.

He groaned as he became fully awake. Then his eyes widened as he remembered and he quickly held his right hand to where the stabbing wound was located.

Only there was no wound.

“Ah, there we go,” he heard a soothing voice saying. Julian looked around. The room he was in was almost totally white, apart from some of the walls which was occupied by blue control panels which displayed various readings. The woman who had spoken was a young nurse who looked very familiar to Julian somehow…why did he keep seeing that face?

He saw that he was not the only patient in the room.

“Sorry for having you put here, in the baby section,” the nurse explained, “but the most of the wards are full, a skirmish in the Constant Division.”

She sighed.

“Uurgh, why the captain ignored the warnings of the buoys I will never understand. Well, the home box is still being analysed.”

She looked at him. Julian looked at her and then around the room again spotting about a dozen cribs with sleeping babies and beds where mothers and even some fathers rested with their babies on their stomach or breastfeeding them. There was also an alien brooding a nest of eggs and from a room came the sound of biting and chewing.

“Oh, don’t worry; those are just the Xcabahatis twins we’ve had yesterday. They are still feeding on their mother. Like I said, sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Julian said smiling. “Sometimes I feel like belong in this section.”

The nurse chuckled at his attempt of a joke.

“Oswin Clarence, Winnie to my friends,” she said.

“Julian Heller, but I guess you know that already.”

Winnie frowned.

“Yeah, your friends brought you in here. Unusual wound, though, very uncommon these days. Have you been fencing?”

Julian raised his eyebrows.

“Nah, been protecting someone…and it worked, apparently,” he said with a smile, again attempting to joke.

“Well, I’ve already alerted your friends that you’re up again. They should be here any minute. Excuse me,” she added moving from his bed towards one of the cribs and picking up the baby lying in it. It had purple skin and four eyes.

“Poor thing,” Winnie said, “She was in the wreckage when we found her. Couldn’t safe her body so we uploaded her mind into the recovery core. Her injuries were so severe…but we managed to clone a replacement for her, with some of her special wishes too. You’re a lucky girl, aren’t you?” she cooed as she came to Julian’s bed again. She opened up a flap on her nurse uniform and uncovered her left breast to which the alien baby girl latched onto right away.

“Do you want some, too?” Winnie suggested with a smile and a wink. “Very good for the healing process and healthy. You’ve become very weak due to your injury.”

“Thanks; later perhaps.” Julian said. “So you’re saying that she was an adult.”

“Oh yeah!” she replied.

“Julian!”

He looked towards the door where Thuỷ had just arrived with the Doctor following her.

“Hey…” Julian replied waving at her.

“How are you?” Thuỷ asked sitting down beside his bed.

“Fine…Doctor, where and when are we?”

“6679, Resus One, a hospital space station,” the Time Lord replied. “Quiet and exciting time and one of the more peaceful and egalitarian one. We’ve brought you here immediately after that soldier had stabbed you. I’m so sorry that I brought you into that situation. We should have left before it became too violent.”

Julian shook his head.

“It’s not your fault, Doctor. We just weren’t fast enough. I’m glad that you brought us there.”

Thuỷ bent over and planted a kiss on his forehead.

“Thank you for helping me!”

Julian sighed smiling.

“Any time, baby!”

Thuỷ grinned looking around mockingly.

“Looks like you’re the baby here.”

“Well, you can join me any time you want,” he teased. “Or perhaps, you’d like to help Nurse Clarence in taking care of me…with…nursing duties.”

He winked at his girlfriend.

“I just might,” Thuỷ teased. “You wouldn’t regret it for one second…”

Winnie turned towards Julian once again, still nursing the purple alien.

“Right, Julian, you’ll need to stay in bed for a little while longer and you’ll need to eat.”

Julian nodded. Winnie went to a section of the wall and typed on a panel. A minute later, a square hole in the wall lit up and Winne pulled out a plate with what looked like a healthy meal. As Julian took his first bite, the Doctor suddenly pulled out his psychic paper.

“Oooh, someone left me a message…oh! A very special someone!”

His face lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Wait! Who is it?” Thuỷ wanted to know but the Doctor had already stormed out.

“You don’t have to stay, go after him,” Julian suggested.

“You can call me any time,” he added looking pointedly at his smartphone lying on a bedside table. Thuỷ nodded.

As she ran to catch up to the Doctor he had already made his way into the gigantic lobby of the station. Thuỷ slowed her pace as she saw the Doctor speaking to –

“Hello, sweetie!”

Thuỷ frowned as she saw woman greeting the Doctor like that.

“Dr River Song…” he replied, in a voice showing both attraction and caution, as if he didn’t trust her completely.

“Oh, already got someone new, have you?”

The Doctor turned to see Thuỷ watching them.

“Oh, this is Thuỷ Đàm, from Hamburg, early 21st century. I brought her and her boyfriend with me. Got into an incident, he’s being treated as we speak.”

“So that’s why you’re here. I’ve been here for a couple of days. Though I’ve detected your life sign coming off from the Tsuranga Transport, but my scanner must have been mistaken.”

She approached Thuỷ stretching out her hand.

“Hello. I’m Dr River Song, archaeologist.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Thuỷ said.

“Oh, likewise!” she beamed sizing up Thuỷ seductively.

“Let’s do diaries, shall we, pretty boy?” she added taking out a small blue diary from her pocket. Thuỷ watched this bizarre interaction as she joined the two in the waiting area where the Timelord and the mysterious archaeologist each compared their diaries.

“So…have we done Asgard yet?” she began.

“Uh…no, sorry, no Asgard,” he replied flipping a few pages.

“Ah! Crash of the Byzantium, we must have done that.”

“No, sorry…Jim the Fish?”

“Nope.”

“First date together? I remember, there were two of you! The mind races, doesn’t it?”

“Two of me? ...Stonehenge? The Pandorica?”

“I’ve got that! Why were you wearing that fez?”

“Fezes are cool!”

“Frost Fair, 1814?”

“Haven’t got that yet.”

“That settles it, then”

Dr. Song closed her diary. Thuỷ had finally understood.

“You’re not meeting in sequence,” she observed.

“Oooh, smart girl, I like her!” Dr Song said.

“River, why are you here?” the Doctor asked.

“Don’t you know already?”

He frowned.

“Something is going to happen here…what have you found out?”

“Spoilers!”

“No, not this time!” the Doctor stood up.

“A friend of mine is being treated here, along with several dozens from a skirmish in the Constant Division. Have they brought something on board, River?”

She regarded him for a moment.

“What do you know about this plant, Doctor?”

She indicated the gigantic plant in the centre of the lobby, with enormous leaves that were large enough that someone could be sleeping on them. Somehow, the scent of the plant made Thuỷ feel relaxed and content.

“ _Pagkosmios eudaimonia_ ,” said the Doctor, “Placed here to give the patient a sense of relaxation and happiness, due to its pheromones which, on humans, are quite harmless but to some other species act like a drug…”

He soniced it.

“And it’s perfectly healthy.”

“One of the more known species who need it to survive are the Angal!” River pointed out with a deadly serious expression on her face. The Doctor looked at her with a worried, even slight panicked look.

“The Angal…?”

Thuỷ could see his breathing increasing as his chest moved up and down.

“There is an Angal infestation here?!” he asked.

“Not yet, but there will be. In about 15 minutes,” Dr Song replied.

“Julian still needs a couple of days here!” Thuỷ pointed out rising from the chair.

“We need to evacuate the station,” the Doctor said fearfully, running his hand through his hair.

“You can’t prevent it, honey,” Dr Song stated. “This is the end of Resus One Station. I personally led the archaeological expedition. All we can do is to contain it. We need to lock this place down!”

“No, we can’t, we _can’t_ , River!” the Doctor screamed. “We don’t just run away.”

“There’s no choice, it’s fixed!” Dr Song said, calmly but loudly.

“Then we unfix it!” the Doctor cried. River grabbed his arms.

“You once told me, Doctor, that you tried to fight time itself. You saw yourself as the Timelord Victorious and you failed. This is the same!”

He looked at her angrily and freed himself from her grab.

“Go and find Julian,” he ordered Thuỷ. “Bring him to the TARDIS. There is a medical bay inside. He’ll be safe there.”

She nodded and ran into the corridor leading to the baby ward.

“That was delicious!” Julian exclaimed.

“Still don’t want a feed?” Winnie teased him again. He smiled.

“I think you put me in here on purpose.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes,” he said his face now a little more serious.

“It’s the Doctor, isn’t it? You know him from somewhere.”

She shook his head.

“I haven’t met him until today.”

Julian tilted his head.

“But you’re intrigued by him.”

Winnie sighed and looked down.

“I can’t really explain it. But it’s like I need to tell him something. Like I need to be there for him…”

She went over to the crib where the purple baby was now sleeping and checked her nappy. As she returned to Julian’s bed, the doors opened and Thuỷ stormed in.

“Oh! Hi, sorry to interrupt,” she said panting.

“Did you run in here?” Julian asked incredulously.

“Nurse Clarence, I need to speak to you,” Thuỷ said.

“Why?”

Thuỷ took a few breaths.

“Well, actually, I came to collect Julian. We’re about to leave.”

“Leave? But he hasn’t fully recovered.”

“Yeah, I haven’t been nursed yet,” Julian joked.

“It’s not funny!” Thuỷ cried. A mother on a bed nearby stared at her frowning and one of the babies began to cry.

“There is an Angal infestation on this station,” Thuỷ whispered to Winnie.

Winnie looked at her in a half-serious, half-amused fashion.

“We’re one of the most secure hospitals in this galaxy! Our scanners would certainly pick up an Angal infestation, especially since we have a couple of _Pagkosmioi_ growing here…”

“Then your systems must be faulty or whatever, but we must leave now!” Thuỷ hissed.

Winnie gulped noting the seriousness in her face. She looked to Julian who tilted his head encouraging her to believe Thuỷ’s statement.

“Okay…” Winnie breathed. “Okay…I’ve got an idea.”

She turned to the parents surrounding them.

“Listen up, everyone! We have to relocate. There is a failure in the generators and this section will be off power for a couple of hours. A maintenance team will be here soon. So I need everybody to follow me.”

The parents looked concerned, and some also exchanged looks as if they knew that Winnie was lying, but they followed her nonetheless. Winnie grabbed one of the babies and placed it in Thuỷ’s arms while she herself picked up the purple alien baby she had fed earlier. Julian picked himself up from the bed and found himself able to stand. He wondered for a moment whether Winnie’s statement of him being weak has just been an excuse to keep him in the ward but he shed off that thought.

Thuỷ led them back to the lobby where the TARDIS stood in a corner. The Doctor and Dr. Song were nowhere to be found but they could hear voices from an office.

“Let’s go in there,” Thuỷ said pointing at the TARDIS.

“That box?” Winnie asked. “That’s how you came here?”

“Oh, it’s more than just a box,” Julian said with a grin. Just as he said it, the Doctor came out of the office, his pace fast and his face grumpy, furious even.

“See, that’s the trouble with time travel, you can’t present evidence because there is none yet!”

“I told you, honey!” Dr Song replied running after him.

“Well, I could just do this,” the Doctor suggested holding up his sonic screwdriver.

“That will only cause panic!”

“So would a lockdown!”

“I just wanted you and your friends to be safe!”

“And I’m telling you, that isn’t enough!”

They both turned as did the group around Winnie, Thuỷ and Julian. A patient came into the lobby, groaning, with an unusual walk, as if he couldn’t really control himself.

“There goes the proof,” the Doctor mumbled. He stretched up his arm pointing his screwdriver towards the ceiling as the patient convulsed and crouched down. As he walked on his fours towards the _Pagkosmios_ , something on his back, covered by his clothing, began to fidget around as if it wanted to get out.

“Things just got very _Alien_ in here!” Julian observed fearfully.

The man screamed as the something green and club-shaped protruded out of the man’s back and his screams became louder. As he reached the plant, an alarm finally blared. The whole hospital became as busy as an ant hill as doctors and nurses swarmed into wards and rooms to evacuate the patients.

Julian, Thuỷ and the others stared horrified as the infected man lunged at the gigantic plant and took a bite into the thick leaves. His skin had meanwhile turned greenish in the whole process and became even more so now as the club-thing thickened.

“Into the TARDIS, now!” the Doctor roared. Frightened, Julian and Thuỷ led the group from the baby ward into the time machine, waiting until everyone got inside before entering themselves. But they had just stepped inside when the doors closed and the TARDIS rocked around as it set off automatically.

“What the hell???” Thuỷ screamed.

The TARDIS was in flight with its typical sounds until it stopped and became still again.

Julian and Thuỷ breathed incredibly fast as they stood up again.

“What just happened?” Julian asked.

“No idea,” Thuỷ said. She got onto her feet and stumbled towards the controls.

“Where are we?” Winnie asked.

“It’s…it’s so…” one of the parents began.

“…bigger on the inside,” Julian finished. “Yeah, that’s the least of our worries now, believe me. We’re short a pilot. _The_ pilot, to be exact.”

Thuỷ had accessed the screen and transferred the image to the big round screen next to the doors.

“We’re in outer space!” she gasped.

“And that is…” Julian said.

“Resus One, yes,” Winnie confirmed.

Thuỷ typed something on the keyboard.

“Oh no!”

“What is it?”

She looked towards Julian.

“They’ve enabled the lockdown. All escape pods have been made inaccessible!”

“Must have been the station itself,” Winnie said. “Like our transports, it is largely automatic. In case of an infection, the place is automatically locked down. You can’t just issue an evacuation.”

“That’s a horrible way of thinking, we have to get these people out!” Julian said.

“Believe me, I don’t like it either, I’ve been protesting against this measure again and again. But no one listened. Plus, we haven’t had an incident ever, at least, not at the station. We had an incident at the _Tsuranga_ transport a while ago with a Pting but that only encouraged my superiors to keep the system.”

Just then, a buzzing sound filled the TARDIS and two people appeared out of nowhere: the Doctor and Dr River Song. The Doctor freed himself from River’s grasp again but as he stormed towards the console, the screen showed the station exploding.

“They blew it up!” Thuỷ screamed banging her fists on the console. Julian stared at the screen.

The Doctor glared at Dr Song who looked at him with an expression that said “Told you so!”

“Hostile Action Displacement System has been activated, took the TARDIS here. Right, Nurse Clarence, where can I take you?” he merely asked.

“Um…” she stammered for a moment. “Cor-Station. It’s the political centre of the Andromeda Galaxy, they have a very good hospital there. They should have never been so cowardly. There could have been another way. I will make sure that there will be next time…hopefully there won’t be a next time but all the same…”

The Doctor typed in the coordinates and set the TARDIS off. Minutes later they stepped off at the more than gigantic space station, so large that Tokyo could have fit easily a hundred times in here.

While the Doctor stayed in the TARDIS to argue with Dr River Song, Julian and Thuỷ said goodbye to Winnie and the others.

“Thank you for everything,” Winnie said. “Are you sure that I can’t nurse you any further?”

“Thanks, but no,” Julian said returning the cheeky smile.

“Hm…such a shame. It could have been fun,” she said winking. Standing on her toes, she planted a kiss on Julian’s cheek.

“Well then, off you run then,” she whispered in his ear. “Run, you clever boy, and remember me!”

Julian tilted his head at this specific farewell but merely smiled as she turned and led the others to the station’s hospital.

“I like her,” Thuỷ said.

“I’m sure you do,” Julian replied.

“We could have had fun with her,” Thuỷ added. Julian looked at her amusingly.

“If you want, we can stay here for a while; have all the fun you want.”

“Nah,” she said, “I have enough of hospitals for now.”

“Yeah, me too.”

When they stepped into the TARDIS again.

“Where is Dr Song?” Julian asked.

The Doctor turned towards them.

“Oh, we parted ways, for now. I know I’ll see her again, she’s from the future…my future.”

“Who was she?” Thuỷ wanted to know. The Doctor didn’t answer. Instead, he began dancing around the console flipping switches and leavers.

“Right, I was thinking…1772: Plymouth…and the _Resolution_!”


	12. New Horizons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian and Thuỷ travel with the Doctor to 1772 to meet a young German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist, and revolutionary who travels with Captain James Cook on a voyage to the Antarctic and Polynesia. The name of this young man is Georg Forster. Can he find the classless society he so desperately seeks?

Julian and Thuỷ stood in the console room, dressed in the male fashion of the 1770s. Thuỷ had flat-out refused to wear one of the elegant gowns for this journey.

“Why should I?” she said. “I can pose myself as a man. And if that doesn’t fly, they can kiss my ass!”

She had bound her long hair into a braid as had Julian whose hair had grown considerably since he had started travelling with the Doctor. It was handy in time periods like this. He didn’t enjoy wigs very much.

“Right, then,” the Doctor said, the only one who hadn’t dressed up, “let’s meet Captain Cook!”

They held on to the railing as the TARDIS shook as usual while travelling.

“Okay!” the Doctor exclaimed as the TARDIS had landed, “It’s Monday, 13 July 1772.”

“And we’re in Plymouth?” Thuỷ asked.

The Doctor grinned.

“Not exactly.”

He raced towards the doors and opened them.

“Welcome to the _Resolution_ ,” he said with a hand gesture.

“After you.”

Open-mouthed, Thuỷ stepped through the doors followed by Julian. They had entered the captain’s cabin.

“Ah, Doctor! You answered my call.”

The man who had spoken was an elderly gentleman in a military uniform.

“Good morning, Captain Cook,” the Doctor said smiling. “May I introduce my companions: Julian and Thuỷ.”

“Welcome, to the Resolution, gentlemen,” Cook greeted them. Julian could practically feel Thuỷ’s inner eye roll.

"I must say, that communication device is very intriguing, as is your fabulous machine,” Captain Cook added watching the TARDIS.

“I understand, you have some fabulous devices of your own,” the Doctor replied taking back the smartphone.

“Yes, they’ve just been delivered. Please be careful, Doctor, their worth is immeasurable.”

The Doctor and his friends bent forward to examine two large silver watches with a diameter of 13 cm, placed on two distinctly coloured pillows that were themselves situated in a large wooden box.

“Ah…” said the Doctor knowingly. “Time keepers.”

Thuỷ smiled excitingly.

“What are they for?”

The Doctor watched her with equal excitement.

“They’re chronometers. Two watches made specifically for this journey. One will always display the time here in Plymouth based on the line of Greenwich, the prime meridian, the other is to display the time on board as we cross different time zones. It’s high-tech for this era! The first to ever been used in such a way.”

“Made by Larcum Kendall per order of the English parliament,” Captain Cook commented. “I’ll have my astronomer and mathematician, Master William Wales, preside over them each day. It will finally allow us to exactly determine the longitude.”

He watched the Doctor intently.

“Will you join us on our voyage, Doctor?”

“Oh, I will skip ahead from time to time,” the Timelord replied. “I may be 908 years old but my friends shouldn’t stay away from their own time for too long.”

“I see,” Captain Cook said understandingly. “Well, gentlemen, feel free to explore my ship. We’ll be sailing within the hour.”

Julian and Thuỷ nodded politely and went upstairs to the main deck. The day was beautiful. Seagulls were crying above them and the crew went to and fro. Amongst the sailors, they spotted to men, a young one and an older one. The two men spotted Julian and Thuỷ as well.

“Ah, more hired explorers, I take it,” the older man said shaking their hands.

“Johann Reinhold Forster and this is my son Georg.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Georg said.

“Likewise,” Julian replied. “I’m Julian Heller and this is Thuỷ Đàm.”

“Right, I’m going to our cabin, unload my equipment. Are you coming?” the father asked the son.

“I’m staying a longer on deck, father, as long as I can. We won’t see Plymouth for another few years.”

“Suit yourself,” Mr. Forster said and made for the lower decks.

“So,” Georg said as the three walked along the deck, “Two other German-speaking explorers. And I must deem myself fortunate to meet the first ever female explorer in the world, I should think,” he added with a polite smile. Thuỷ raised her eyebrows.

“Well, people chose to see what they want to believe…and most men won’t believe a woman is capable.”

“I assume you’re here because of your experience of foreign lands,” Georg assumed.

“Uh, yeah. That’s right. We’ve travelled a great deal lately. Along with a friend of ours, the Doctor. He’s with the captain at the moment.”

“Oh, then he must be really having the captain’s trust. We’re not even allowed to go down there. They seem to have something secret transported into the captain’s cabin.”

“Seems so,” Julian said evasively.

“Where do you come from?” Georg asked next, “Northern Germany, judging by your accent.”

“Uh, yes,” Thuỷ said chuckling. “We’re both from Hamburg. Where’re you from?”

“Nassenhuben, Prussia,” Georg replied. “But I’ve done a fair share of travelling myself with my father. I’ve been to Saint Petersburg as well as London. Earned money through translating.”

He sighed looking out onto the sea.

“I’ve seen how the world works…or, at least, how it works in Europe. But I wonder…”

He turned to Julian and Thuỷ.

“…is there any place in the world that isn’t divided into lord and peasant? Where there is no above and below concerning class and wealth?”

Julian regarded him with a hint of a sad smile.

“Oh, I’m sure of it…but if so, not for long. And I don’t know whether it will be so where we’re about to go. I’ve never been to Polynesia or the southern lands. Not even with the Doctor. And he has been about anywhere.”

“Such a strange name…” Georg murmured. “The Doctor…Doctor who?”

“Oooh…the question of the ages,” Thuỷ smiled.

“Well,” said Georg. “I need to go to my cabin, unpack and all that.”

He lifted his hat.

“A good day to you, Mr. Heller, Miss Đàm!”

He departed. Thuỷ and Julian were watching him.

“I like him more than his father,” Thuỷ commented.

“Yeah,” Julian agreed. “He seems more open-minded. In fact, for his time period, his view could be described as radical concerning indigenous people and cultures. I’m excited to see him in action.”

“Be careful, though,” Thuỷ reminded him, “You should never meet your heroes.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Julian mused with a grin. “I didn’t realise he was so good-looking.”

Julian and Thuỷ chose to remain on board for a bit longer before the Doctor would travel ahead to some important places the _Resolution_ would sail to. This gave them – and Georg Forster who was eager at this change as Julian and Thuỷ were – the opportunity to see daily life on board and especially which type of food and drink was consumed. And the two time travellers were in shock to learn that the crew drank 65 barrels of rum per month! This meant that each man consumed 3.5 litres of alcohol each day. They even invited Georg, Julian and Thuỷ to drink with them. Georg obliged (what other choice did he have? Water quickly turned into a brackish brown broth when stored on board). Julian and Thuỷ only nipped a few sips. They also didn’t partake in eating Sour Krout, as Captain Cook called it – named after the German dish Sauerkraut – a good medicine against scurvy.

Soon, the Doctor came to pick up his two companions again.

“Sorry, Georg,” said Julian, but we need to, er, study for some time. See ya.”

Georg frowned and tried to follow the three down to the captain’s cabin but a guard blocked his path. Julian turned towards Georg one more time and winked at him which warned him a curious look from Georg. Clearly, the young man was dying to find out just what the three were up to.

“Right, then,” said the Doctor as he, Julian and Thuỷ had returned to the console room.

“Let’s skip ahead!”

* * *

A few minutes later, they found themselves in the wardrobe again as the Doctor instructed them to dress themselves into the warmest of clothing 1773 had to offer. What they would be needing it for, Julian and Thuỷ understood as they exited the TARDIS to find even the captain’s cabin to be freezing cold!

“Welcome to Antarctica,” the Doctor explained. “James Cook and his crew are the first to venture beyond the Antarctiv Circle. On this day they reach the Farthest South.”

They stepped out into the cold.

“Where have you been for the last eight months?” Georg greeted them. “Haven’t seen you in ages!”

“You miss me?” Julian said cheekily winking again. Georg couldn’t resist a slight smile at Julian’s attempts to flirt with him.

Georg pulled him along with him.

“Look at that!” he said breathlessly pointing at the night sky. Julian, Thuỷ and the Doctor also looked up.

“What are those strange green lights?” Georg whispered. Julian smiled and gasped as he witnessed the southern lights flashing over the night sky like a brilliant light show, as if fine, thin clouds were racing over them. Julian shrugged.

“Haven’t seen them for myself either,” he said vaguely avoiding the need to explain photos to the young 18th-entury explorer.

“The lights of the South…” Georg murmured. “The Southern Lights…Aurora Australis. That’s what I’d call them.”

“He came up with that?” Thuỷ whispered to Julian.

“Yes,” Julian whispered back as Georg strolled further along the deck. “They bear that name until today…I mean, our own time,” he corrected himself.

The _Resolution_ anchored along a small but thick sheet of ice. Georg as well as the Doctor and his two companions disembarked to explore this area. Georg, with his sketch book in hand, made drawings of animals and plants all too familiar to Julian and Thuỷ but fantastically new to the people of the era.

But soon Cook had the ship steer north again. For the Doctor, Julian and Thuỷ, after they had spent a few days on board, it was time to skip ahead again. This time though, Georg would not have it.

“Where are you going? Why do you keep hiding for months and months?” he asked chasing after them.

“We’re not hiding, we’re running ahead,” Julian replied having realised that they couldn’t keep the secret from the young man for much longer.

“Running ahead? You’re not making sense, Master Julian!”

Georg’s jaw dropped at the sight of the TARDIS in Cook’s cabin. The captain himself was not present, though.

“This is how we travel, Georg,” the Doctor said leaning casually but stylishly against the side of the blue box.

“But this will truly blow your mind!”

And with an elegant turn, he pushed the doors of the TARDIS open and strolled inside followed by Julian and Thuỷ. Georg’s jaw dropped again and he slowly stepped forwards.

“But…but…this isn’t possible!” he stammered having now arrived in the console room. “Oh my God!!! This is…”

“I know!” grinned the Doctor.

“I did not believe in magic…but I’m inclined to believe in it now.”

“It isn’t magic, Georg,” Thuỷ said smiling. “It is technology. Highly advanced technology, millennia of advancement.”

Georg looked at them.

“So…you’re from the future!”

Julian smiled.

“Very good! 245 years ahead, to be exact. Thuỷ and I come from the year 2018.”

Georg frowned.

“So you…Doctor. You’re from somewhere else entirely.”

The Doctor nodded.

“Yes. But my home is long gone…destroyed by war. I’m a Timelord. I come from another planet in a different part of the universe, the first civilization of the cosmos. I’ve travelled through time and space for nearly my entire life. And I bring friends with me. Earth is practically my second home now…”

Georg stepped onto the platform with the console.

“And this is your steering wheel.”

He walked around the console.

“But you’re not enough people. There are six panels here. How do you keep it steady?”

“We try,” Thuỷ replied.

“So…” Georg deduced further, “You keep travelling forward so that you don’t age too much. To be in roughly the same age when you return to your own time.”

“Oh! You’re clever!” Julian squeaked with a bright grin.

Georg took a deep breath.

“I have to go back,” he said.

“You don’t have to,” the Doctor offered.

Georg shook his head.

“I am part of this voyage. Who am I to cowardly skip ahead if the crew can’t afford this luxury. I am of this time. I should be using it.”

And with that, he nodded and stepped towards the doors.

“See you in a few months. Doctor, Master Julian, Miss Thuỷ.”

And then he was gone having exited the TARDIS. The three others stared after him in silence for a moment. Until the Doctor made preparations to travel ahead again, turning different levers and knobs and typing in space-time coordinates. Julian and Thuỷ went to two of the six panels to keep the TARDIS steady.

“Ready?” asked the Doctor.

Julian and Thuỷ nodded. The Doctor turned the lever that propelled the TARDIS through time and space. A moment later, they landed again.

“Same spot, two months ahead,” the Doctor exclaimed. “It’s the 17th of march, 1773 and we’re close.”

“Close to what?” Thuỷ asked excitedly.

“Ha-ha!” the Doctor merely laughed without elaborating and ran towards the doors and on deck of the _Resolution_. Thuỷ and Julian followed, just in time to hear the cry “Land Ahoy!”

Julian stood next to Georg who marvelled with his father at the sight of New Zealand! As they came close to the shore, three loud bangs occurred as Captain Cook had a few warning shots fired.

“Standard procedure,” the Doctor explained. “As a precaution. You never know in these times, you know?”

* * *

It was easy for the men to view even the most barren landscape as a paradise, Julian thought as they later moved through a dense jungle and rejoiced at the sight of a waterfall and river that lost itself between the trees. One man always stood guard as the others enjoyed the first bath in four months! Julian and Thuỷ didn’t partake and neither did the Doctor. Thuỷ especially wasn’t too keen in the sailors finding out that she was a woman. The men hadn’t enjoyed sex in over a year and who knew what the knowledge of her gender would do to their controlled dignity?

Instead, the three of them stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking the nearby beach where Captain Cook and his officers slowly advanced. A few moments later, Julian realized why: a few Māori warriors were approaching from the other side of the beach.

“Why are they making these exaggerated gestures and faces?” Thuỷ wondered.

“They’re signalling their readiness to fight,” the Doctor said. “But luckily for him, this is not Captain Cook’s first time in New Zealand.”

Meanwhile, Georg had dressed himself and joined the three time travellers at the cliff. On the beach, Captain Cook remained calm and, while his men remained at a distance, continued to approach the natives despite their continuing gestures and faces, which undoubtedly did make the other men nervous since it made the warriors truly seem a bit crazy. Any European who would make such gestures at home would probably be sent quickly to an asylum. But Captain Cook knew what to do and he leaned his face close to one of the Māori and their noses touched.

“The nose kiss: a gesture of peace,” the Doctor commented. “Now they know that you’re peaceful. And they may want to exchange gifts.”

* * *

And it wasn’t long before Georg himself successfully exchanged gifts with Māori warriors. Only a few hours later, he returned with two items which he showed to the Doctor and his companions: one was a mere, short, broad-bladed weapon in the shape of an enlarged tear drop. The other was a lance with a beautifully designed blade.

“Mh, you’ll be regarded as a great warrior to them, Georg,” the Doctor said. “Possessing a mere made purely out of jade, that earns you quite a reputation. Let’s see what the others bring back.”

They had all gathered around a fire as the sun was sinking over the horizon eventually seemingly drowning in the sea. It was at this point that one officer returned with an uncomfortable expression.

“Men! I got this in exchange for a simple nail. I couldn’t believe my eyes. One of them warriors claimed that it was a trophy in a fight and he wanted to sell it to us. Look at this!”

He had a basket in his hands which he carefully laid on the ground. Curiously the men gathered around peering inside and cringed in horror. Then one of them dared to touch whatever was inside and, to the shock of the rest of the men, pulled out a severed head! Thuỷ gasped in shock and put her hands to her mouth, Julian gulped and the Doctor looked at the head with his eyes raised.

“You expected it, didn’t you?” Julian whispered.

“Well…” he replied. “I did read Georg’s journal.”

The Māori meanwhile were utterly unfazed by the find and, in a conversation with Georg, even implied that they were prepared to eat the head!

“It must be an ancient tradition among the Māori,” Georg deduced to Julian, Thuỷ and the Doctor. “It’s certainly not barbarism.”

“Every explorer of your time only describes cannibalism as the habit of wild people without culture,” Thuỷ commented. “No one in Europe would share your view in the slightest.”

“What is the Māori who kills his enemy in combat and proceeds to eat him,” Georg murmured, “to the European who, while not a cannibal, doesn’t deem it neither cruel nor unnatural to slaughter ourselves simply to satisfy the ambition of a duke?”

* * *

The time travellers didn’t stay long. They travelled forwards in the TARDIS while the crew of the Resolution remained for another two months in New Zealand. Their next destination was Tahiti. The men had never been as eager as now to step onto land. Julian took a glance at Thuỷ who had a frown on her face knowing what the men longed for.

And yes, as they had stepped of the boat taking them to the shore through shining blue water so clear that you could see the ground beneath it, they were greeted by a large number of women, scarcely dresses, nearly naked in fact, bringing them gifts in form of fruits. Bananas, cocoanuts and other fruits that Julian couldn’t name but tasted fantastically. The women proceeded to kiss the men who seemed to melt at the sight of them save for Georg. He was one of the very few who did not join the women in a chase through the water or vanishing in the small huts made out of only a roof out of wood and palm leaves. Thuỷ sat next to Julian finishing a fruit one of the women had given her. They had greeted all of them in the same way, with gifts and kisses and Thuỷ had accepted all of those out of politeness and Julian knew that she wouldn’t have a problem in beginning a relationship with any of them under normal circumstances…but these weren’t normal circumstances.

“They’re suffering from STDs, aren’t they?” she asked Julian. He nodded.

“Even Georg knew that. In fact, he’s asking the captain right now to put an end to these…recreational games. But Cook cares more for the joy of his men than for the health of any natives.”

* * *

Soon, Georg and his father started to explore the jungle of Tahiti and Julian and Thuỷ followed their example (the Doctor too had disappeared somewhere) and they eventually found a small river where they were finally alone.

“Now we can have out bath,” Thuỷ said quietly and started to strip until she was naked. Julian too took off his clothes and together they jumped into the water that was thankfully cool enough to relax from the wet heat of the tropics. They swam together for a while before Thuỷ took his face in her palms and started to kiss him. Julian kissed back and soon their tongues intertwined. Thuỷ began to moan as Julian descended down to her breasts and started to suckle her and Thuỷ began to chuckle calling him her little baby and they kissed again. They moaned louder as Julian entered Thuỷ and she rode him. Finally the both came and she kissed him again.

“Wait, wait, wait!” she suddenly whispered and looked around. Julian too had heard the giggle and they hid behind the hanging branches of a tree looking towards the cliff a few meters away from them. Georg and the girl beside him couldn’t see them through the leaves. She led him towards the edge and proceeded to jump into the water. As she reappeared to the surface, she extended a hand and he took off his shirt and jumped in too.

“Hm, so modest…” Thuỷ whispered grinning. “But enough for you, it seems.”

She giggled as she touched his dick and Julian couldn’t suppress a smile.

“Let’s join them,” Thuỷ whispered with a suggestive smile as she swam forward. Julian’s jaw dropped but he quickly followed.

“Hi there,” Thuỷ called cheerfully.

“Miss Thuỷ? Taking a bath as well?” Georg said only to discover Julian approaching them.

“Oh, we’re doing so much more than just bathe,” Thuỷ grinned. “Who are you?” she asked to the Tahitian girl.

“Ineroa,” she said. She approached Thuỷ and planted a kiss on her lips.

“Wanna join us?” Thuỷ asked. “Julian certainly wouldn’t mind.”

“No…I don’t think he would, actually,” Georg said slowly realizing just how undressed both of them really were. Julian winked at him.

“ _Georg!_ ” a voice shouted through the jungle.

“I have to go back to my father,” Georg said planting a kiss on Ineroa’s hand before leaving to dress himself.

Julian and Thuỷ soon dressed themselves as well and joined the Doctor who had collected a few indigenous plants.

“In a few centuries, Georg’s findings will prove helpful to science. He couldn’t know it yet but the plants he brought back will lie in the state archives of Göttingen before being used by modern scientists to extract DNA in order to find useful medical properties.”

The three of them watched Georg and his father disappear in the jungle.

“The journey will take two more years,” the Doctor went on, “But Forster won’t find what he was looking for. A truly classless society!”

“He only travelled to the wrong places,” Julian said. “There are many places even in our time without ruling or hierarchies.”

“Didn’t Georg later become a revolutionary?” Thuỷ asked.

The Doctor nodded.

“Do you want see more of this journey?” he asked them, “Or do you wish to go ahead in time? See more of Germany’s history and other eras in the future?”

Julian looked at Thuỷ and they both knew what they wanted.

“I think we’ve seen enough of this time,” Thuỷ said.

“There is one more thing I’d like to show you first,” the Doctor murmured.

* * *

The TARDIS materialised in the attic of a small house.

“It’s 1794 and we’re in Paris, at Rue des Moulins,” the Doctor said ready to step outside the TARDIS. Thuỷ grabbed his arm.

“Doctor…isn’t the Reign of Terror happening right now?”

“Yes, it is,” the Doctor replied seriously. “But we’re not here to see that.”

Julian and Thuỷ followed the Doctor as he approached a man lying on a bed.

“Hello, Georg,” he whispered.

“Doctor!” an older Georg replied weakly glancing at Julian and Thuỷ.

“They had started to slaughter the people,” Georg whispered. “Doctor…what is the situation at Mainz? I know you’ve been watching me. I’ve seen your magical box…several times since my voyage to Polynesia…and it gave me hope…”

“The Prussians have conquered the Mainz Republic. It can’t join France anymore. I’m sorry, Georg!”

Georg was breathing heavily and coughed a few times.

“Revolution is a force of nature…a hurricane! It cannot be slowed…but I have never ceased to believe that true freedom can be achieved, Doctor…tell me…how long does it take?”

The Doctor sighed.

“A few centuries after this time…but it won’t last. Once a species has gone the path of destruction…it is very difficult to steer them back towards harmony. And humanity has been destructive for a very long time. But it has been peaceful for far longer in its existence! And there will be times, Georg, where you people will be like that again. Everything ends. Otherwise nothing would ever get started! And it lasts, Georg. Humans will always strive towards that perfect form…and there will be many solutions. And humanity will survive! You have billions of years yet to come.”

Georg smiled and sighed before closing his eyes…one last time.


	13. Continental

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor, Julia and Thuỷ land on Earth in the year 80,000,000 AD when humanity is long gone and the continents have drifted. But there is something off about this world as they will soon see...

“Say it again”

“80,000,000 AD!”

“Amazing!”

The TARDIS had just landed and the Doctor had activated his screen to show Julia and Thuỷ a map of the Earth in this time.

“And we are…” the Doctor exclaimed running excitingly towards the doors, opening them and running out with the two humans following him.

“…in the Mediterranean Sea!”

Julia and Thuỷ stepped out of the TARDIS in awe into a warm, sunny day on top of a hill surrounded by vast mountains.

“Continental drift!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Oh, if Alfred Wegener could see this…that reminds me, I owe him that…”

“So…” Julia asked, “Are there any humans here?”

The Doctor shook his head.

“No, not in this region, this is Rovar territory now, the new intelligent species on Earth, arthropods, not human-like at all.”

“Then what is this?” Thuỷ said pointing at one of the higher mountains where five figures were standing seemingly moving towards them.

“Hmm, that’s odd…” the Doctor said pulling out binoculars from his jacket. Then he turned around in fear as the all too familiar _Vworp Vworp Vworp_ sounded right next to them and the TARDIS began to dematerialise.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” the Doctor screamed stretching out his arm as if he wanted to grab the old box. Moments later, he landed flat on his stomach only to roll on his back again to avoid being hit by a weapon’s blast that shook the earth.

“What the hell???” Thuỷ shouted as more shots were firing at them.

“Run!”

Julia tried to join the Doctor and Thuỷ but more blasts hit the space between them and she found herself running in the other direction. The ground was eroding beneath her feet like an avalanche without snow. Julia screamed as the soil gave way. She desperately tried to find something to hold on to but it was to no avail. It was like the mountain itself was crumbling. _This is it_ , Julia thought as she felt no more ground beneath her feet, she was just flying down but somehow it didn’t feel like falling out of the sky, it felt as if she was caught somewhere…

The Doctor and Thuỷ ran as pieces of the mountain continued to slither downwards around them. The Doctor took her hand and they ran away from the slope just in time as the slope itself was crumbling. The area to which they had fled consisted only of rock and was full of oddly-shaped geological formations that offered many places to hide. Out of breath, the Doctor and Thuỷ lied against a rocky wall.

“…Julia…” Thuỷ managed to breathe out.

“…no idea…” the Doctor replied.

Thuỷ simply lowered her head. No! It couldn’t be! Julia was alive, she was hiding somewhere, just like they were.

After a while, Thuỷ turned to the Doctor.

“Why did the TARDIS disappear?”

“The HADS,” the Doctor explained. “Hostile Action Displacement System. If the TARDIS is in great danger of being seriously harmed by an attack, time winds, temporal weapons or anything else that can penetrate its shields, it relocates to a safe place. Clever girl, anticipated the shots merely seconds ahead! But how could the humans acquire such powerful weapons? I’ve only seen such weapons in the – “

But he stopped himself.

He got to his feet and took out his sonic. He used it very shortly and quickly pocketed again.

“We have to reach the Rovar. They know me…a different me…two, in fact.”

Julia was still a bit dizzy when she realized that she had landed on solid ground, some kind of landing pad. But she had only been spending two seconds on checking his surroundings when she was rather violently grabbed by a couple of soldiers and made to stand upright.

“Take her to interrogation!” one of the soldiers shouted.

“Yes, ma’am!” the two holding Julia replied and roughly led her through a corridor, almost dragging her.

“Let go of me!” Julia shouted struggling to get free. They turned right and entered a small room with a single chair and a small table with several tools. Julia’s eyes widened.

“Look, I’m not really into this kind of play!” she pleaded while simultaneously trying to cheer herself up with a joke. Her heart raced as she was strapped to the chair. An older man stepped out of the shadows of the dimly lit room. Julia stared at him. The man slowly walked around her chair.

“So much destruction…” he said calmly, “…so much loss. The universe itself gets lesser day by day…while having been lost over a thousand times by the Timelords and the Daleks alike.”

“I thought we were allies with the Timelords,” Julia said having caught on what he was talking about.

“Allies!” the soldier chuckled. “As if their deeds made everything better. They promised us a save Earth, they said our homeworld would be protected and yet they allowed these fucking arthropods to crawl over our soil!”

He became louder with each word and leaned over Julia with his face only inches from her when he finished.

“So that’s what this is all about, then?” Julia guessed.

“No, no, no, no…it’s bad enough that you travel with one of those arrogant self-proclaimed gods but you’re traveling with HIM! The worst of them all, the maniac who fought the Horde of the Travesties that cost me almost my entire union! The Butcher of Skull Moon who left that battle without ever carrying a single weapon! I saw what he does! I was with him at the Assault on Seriphia, I thought he was a hero then…but I would rather fight side by side with the Devil rather than the Doctor of War! Why is he here?”

Julia breathed more quickly now.

“I don’t know! I hadn’t met him yet when he fought in the war…”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN FOUGHT??? HE FIGHTS RIGHT NOW; HE’S OUT THERE AND I WILL – ”

But the general stopped as the lights went out and they were in complete darkness.

“He’s here!” the general whispered and there was a fear in his voice. Julia gulped. Which Doctor was here, she wondered. _Her_ Doctor…or the one that she had only heard about vaguely if the Doctor would ever even mention the war. Then the door opened and a man stood there, only a silhouette in the frame illuminated by the corridor light. Julia heard the weapons of the soldiers powering up ready to engage the figure. But he raised his arm and a buzzing sound was heard and the guns of the soldiers gave off bright sparks. The soldiers let them go in pain and the figure used their brief moment of distraction to hurry across the room raising his sonic again.

Julia felt her bonds falling down and a hand grabbing her.

“Run!”

Grinning with relief, she took the man’s hand and they hurried into the corridor. She knew exactly who this man was although she had never seen his face before. He hurried around a corner and Julia saw it: the TARDIS!

“Quickly, now,” the Doctor said pulling her along and Julia raised after him closing the door and turned around – it was certainly not the same TARDIS that she knew…

Its interior was much larger than the one Julia knew: a vast bureau almost entirely covered one wall, its huge drawers filled with various objects. Surrounding the console itself were several metal half-arches, covered in circular holes resembling roundels. Clocks of all description — but mostly mechanical ones — littered various nooks and crannies. This control room had multiple light sources and an abundance of wooden surfaces, which gave it a sense of warmth and even opulent comfort. At least a dozen books were in another alcove, forming a sort of en suite library. Furniture was found in abundance here. Indeed, there was a large area immediately adjacent larger than the console area itself, which had several comfortable chairs, lamps, an ottoman — all of which conspired to give this control room the appearance of a cosy living room.

“Welcome to the TARDIS!” the Doctor said. Julia could now take in his look: he had dark hair with short messy curls dropping over his forehead. He wore a bottle green moleskin overcoat that looked rugged and unkept, a bronze-grey paisley-brocade with a fob watch and an ascot scarf done in midnight blue. He left the points of the shirt's collar drooped across his shoulders as he left it open-necked and wore the ascot crookedly on his own naked neck. He also sported wrinkled tan trousers haphazardly secured by a slouching belt only buckled by an S-link chain, with a pair of caramel brown British Army Calvary boots with a set of matching leather soldier's gaiters strapped across his shins, all of which were loosely laced and knotted improperly.

“What do you think?” the Doctor asked, proudly extending his arms.

“It’s certainly bigger on the inside,” Julia mumbled. The Doctor frowned.

“You look like you’ve seen this before,” he said seemingly a bit disappointed.

Julia stepped closer to him as the Doctor once again turned to the console which looked quite Victorian and retro. The time rotor moved up and down but the TARDIS was absolute still, it didn’t even rock a bit!

“I know who you are, Doctor,” Julia said. “Though you don’t know me yet.”

She approached the console and the Doctor glanced aside at her.

“How wonderful,” he muttered, “that means I’ve got a future, certainly nice to know in these times.”

“This is the Time War,” Julia whispered almost staring at him. He frowned even more.

“Why are you looking at me like that? I’m not part of the war, I never was!”

“But the general said you did, no, YOU said you did! The older you, _my_ Doctor…”

“Then he must come from a parallel universe because I will never join them!” the Doctor said, calmly but firmly. He walked away from Julia towards another panel.

“I came here to help the Rovar, to mediate! You humans are such wonderful creatures but times like these bring out the very worst in you.”

“Where are we going?” Julia asked.

“To their base,” the Doctor said…

“So you’ve been here before?” Thuỷ wondered as they moved through a natural tunnel through the mountain.

“The first time was before the Time War, well, before I joined it, I should say. Didn’t want to give myself to that, I wanted to help. Help where I could but I swore to myself that I wouldn’t fight…until I did.”

“You mentioned two of you?” Thuỷ inquired further.

“Did I? Bit of a mix-up, my mistake,” said the Doctor grimly but in such a way that Thuỷ could clearly sense he was lying. He was hiding something…

“Don’t remember much of this…which is probably a sign that I’ll be meeting myself eventually. The timeline will be out of sync, the earlier me will forget…I do hope we can find Julia and leave! I don’t plan to stay here longer than I need to…I seem to have mixed up the years a bit…it was beautiful here once…before the war reached Earth properly.”

Suddenly Thuỷ grabbed the Doctor’s arm and dragged him to the left. The Doctor raised his hands as did Thuỷ. Laser pointers were aimed at them and a couple of feet away, a group of beings were standing before them.

“Don’t move!” one of the Rovar demanded with a creaky, very non-human voice that Thuỷ couldn’t possibly describe.

“It’s all right,” the Doctor said, “I’m a Time Lord! Scan me, I’m your ally.”

One of the Rovar held up a scanner and regarded it suspiciously.

“One Time Lord, one human. Who are you?”

“I’m the Doctor,” he said. “And I’m looking for a fellow companion of mine, we’ve got separated.”

“She was teleported off to the human’s base,” the Rovar said. “We’ve been fighting side by side for you, Time Lord, for the sake of the universe! But they have betrayed us!”

“I promise you, I will not let them destroy you!” the Doctor said.

“If they have betrayed us, how can we trust you, Doctor? For all we know, this could be part of your species’ devious plans.”

Suddenly, the Doctor posed himself and smiled.

“Oh, I am certain I can deliver on my promise,” he said.

And at that moment, Thuỷ heard it too: the TARDIS. It materialised right in front of them. Thuỷ jumped out of joy prepared to go straight inside but the Doctor held her back, his smile vanished.

“It’s not ours…” he whispered.

The doors opened and out stepped Julia! Following her was a man dressed in a bottle green moleskin overcoat and wrinkled tan trousers. Thuỷ ran up to Julia to hug her and the Doctor slowly approached the other man.

“You…” he mumbled. “…when?”

“I could ask you that,” the other Doctor said grimly. “Is it true, then?”

The Doctor gulped.

“You have to.”

“But I refuse!”

“If you do…then everything we ever fought for will be in vain. This is it! Look around you. As reality is falling apart, so do alliances.”

“I help where I can, I will not fight!”

“There is no escape, Doctor…”

Julia and Thuỷ watched as their Doctor stepped back from his former self and took out his sonic checking the reading.

“Got our ride back,” he noted. “Thanks for saving Julia. Take care, Doctor.”

And he turned away leading Julia and Thuỷ towards where their TARDIS had rematerialized. The Eighth Doctor stared after them before turning to the Rovar…

“Did you tell him?”

It wasn’t a loud question, the Doctor _was_ calm but there was anger in every syllable of his question.

“Didn’t have to,” Julia shrugged. “Seeing as to where we are and that I was a future companion, there was only one possible solution.”

The Doctor breathed heavily but said nothing. He merely stared at Julia before turning towards the console.

The old man wore a brown leather trenchcoat, dark green-brown moleskin, dark tan corduroy trousers, a box-frame belt with several fastener pins and studded pinholes, and dark brown combat boots adorned with black leather gaiters, which had a few buttons missing. He sported a beard which was a grey as his hair. It was the last thing the human soldiers ever saw as the unarmed Warrior ascended upon them in his blue box and the day they wished they would have never crossed the Doctor of War…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has, for now, been put on hold. I'm currently writing a story featuring Thirteen, Yaz and a new original companion. I'll publish it once I have finished it. :)


End file.
